


Memento Mori

by cheydinhal



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A Truly Staggering Amount of Coincidences, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Grey Jedi Kylo Ren, Identity Concealment, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Intercrural Sex, Kylo Ren is Not a Miniature Han Solo, M/M, Sex with Repressed Feelings, Smuggler Ben Solo, Smuggler Kylo Ren, Violence, Way Too Much Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:48:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7823716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheydinhal/pseuds/cheydinhal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exhausted by expectations and determined to leave his family's legacy behind, Ben Organa-Solo forged a new identify for himself as a smuggler, far from the reach of the New Republic.  Armitage Hux, an officer with the First Order, was never part of his plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nar Shaddaa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [Mak's](http://bygoneboy.tumblr.com/) wonderful [kylux minifest](http://bygoneboy.tumblr.com/tagged/kylux-minifest) on tumblr. My prompt(s) were from the amazingly talented [reserve](http://reserve.tumblr.com/) and included smuggler!Ben, Kylo and Hux meeting before Hux becomes a general, and first meetings. I did my best to wrangle in some of your other prompts in as well.
> 
> So this fic comes in three chapters (it's sort of a "three meetings" thing), and originally the plan was to post them all at once but my dog, who's fifteen, suffered an accident earlier this week and I've spent the last few days nursing him and taking care of the house I'm looking after, so I'm not quite finished, but each section reads sort of like a one-shot and I have a troop of loyal friends who're making sure I stay on top of this fic. I hope that's all right, and that this fic resembles what you had in mind when you wrote out those prompts ❤
> 
> EDIT: My friend was a sport and [ drew Kylo in his mask/hood for me](http://benamidalaas.tumblr.com/post/150014348076/silkbrickhouse-and-i-shall-call-this-post-gdi) even though she doesn't like kylux, so a big thank you to her!

> "[...] for dust you are and to dust you will return."
> 
> —  **Genesis 3:19**

 

Nar Shaddaa was the planetary embodiment of Han Solo, so it was little surprise Kylo hated it. Chaos wrapped up in a city that spanned the entirety of the Smuggler’s Moon, it reeked of desperation and despair, yet managed to possess a strange sort of charm that kept dragging people back. Or, Kylo thought with a grimace, perhaps it was the fact that literally nothing was illegal that kept Nar Shaddaa’s traffic steady, no matter how many centuries passed by. Crime paid, he knew, and that’s what brought him back time and time again to this planet-like moon with its strange, teeming echo and its surface packed with so many criminals and low-lives it wasn’t even worth trying to find anyone in particular. That, too, was part of the draw. The Smuggler’s Moon was where people went to disappear, and they often had little trouble accomplishing that.

It was unfortunate, then, that _disappearing_ wasn’t what Kylo was here to do, even if he looked it, currently holed up in the corner of some generic club in Nar Shaddaa’s Entertainment Promenade as he was, nursing a glass of Corellian whiskey as his second celebrated their recent success by mingling with the crowd, his pink skin and pale blue hair blending in with the lights flickering in the ceiling.

Kylo pursed his lips unseen. Zeltrons. He hoped Madana enjoyed the downtime. They’d be leaving soon—Kylo never could stand to be on Nar Shaddaa for longer than he had to. The place screamed of a million chaotic lives, a too-strong echo in the Force that sometimes caught Kylo off-guard, but Solo’s footprint shone brightest amongst them, even when Kylo tried to ignore it. It seemed that, even decades later, Solo’s face was famous enough that concealing his own while planetside was a top priority. He ignored the little voice in his head that said, as it always did, that he was running, but running was better than staying. Running was what he did well and, he thought bitterly, and it was something of a family talent, so it was appropriate that he’d be fleeing the Smuggler’s Moon as soon as his crew had had their fill now that their next shipment of cargo had been loaded. He comforted himself with that thought as he watched the twi’lek dancers swivel their hips to the pulsing music, ignoring the weighty stare of the third member of his three-man crew.

“You can’t drink that with your mask on, boss,” Bia said with an amused smile, and Kylo’s eyes narrowed over the patterned mask that hid everything from his nose down before he pushed the drink towards her, concealing a small sigh as she immediately reached for it, nails clinking noisily against the glass.

“You could have just asked for it,” he said lowly. She shrugged, peering at him with large yellow eyes, and he pretended not to see the concern that always shone there. The youngest of their crew, Bia was oddly protective of them all, but Kylo supposed that made sense, and he appreciated her in moments like this, when he could feel her reaching out to him clumsily through the Force, the little nudge and a hushed whisper that asked _youokay_ accompanied, as always, by a stuttering wave of curiosity.

Kylo turned his hand over on the table, palm up, and uncurled his fingers in answer. _Leavingsoon_ , he sent back, watching as her face lit up in glee when she received the message. She’d come a long way despite not being overly strong in the Force, Kylo thought, even with a continuing disappointment for her teacher.

“You’re being paranoid,” she said out loud, flipping one tattooed orange lekku over her shoulder. “You could at least remove the cowl. Honestly, you look more suspicious with it than without, and no one’s going to report you based on your _hair_. If we’re leaving soon, you should relax.”

“No,” Kylo said bluntly, and Bia pursed her lips, blinking imploringly at him, but she didn’t pursue the matter, instead deeming the drink she’d swiped more worth her time, though he wasn’t blind to the way she eyed him over the glass.

He knew she was right. Clubs were places where skin was revealed, not hidden, and he cursed himself for allowing Madana to choose this place instead of a cantina, where the lights wouldn’t have been as bright and the patrons less invasive, but he also knew that, on a planet of killers and criminals and victims, one masked, hulking figure was unlikely to draw attention to themselves even in a club environment, not when there was so much else going on as the strong exploited the weak. On a planet like Nar Shaddaa, the only thing that stood out painfully was _kindness_ , and it was for that reason that Nar Shaddaa, hated though it was, was one of the planets Kylo allowed himself even a modicum of downtime on, because _kindness_ on a planet like Nar Shaddaa usually only meant one of three things: danger, naivety, or Jedi, and with Skywalker’s first pupils rapidly approaching ages where he could unleash them on the galaxy, well. Well. Kylo counted on the grimy, suspicious nature of Nar Shaddaa’s population to point them out fast, not that he expected any were to be found out here, searching for a lost son.

They’d probably rejoiced when he left.

Kylo grimaced, reaching out to swipe his drink back from Bia’s hands, but she was quick, holding it out of his reach with a smirk as she raised one artificially painted eyebrow. “No,” she said, parroting his earlier answer before her eyes slid pointedly to the bar. He frowned at her for a few moments before sighing and slipping away, gliding through the crowds until he reached the bar, stretching out with the Force to whisper a suggestion into the easily susceptible mind of the bartender as he claimed one of the seats for himself.

He didn’t like being here. He felt too exposed, too open, but then again, the only place he didn’t feel exposed was on his ship. Off the _Myrmidon_ , the mask and cowl served a functional purpose, keeping people from seeing his face and the eagle-eyed from making the connection between him and his famous parents (Solo had too many debts in this teeming underground world, too many enemies who had nothing better to do than hold grudges and stew), but more than anything it made him feel safe, in _control_ , so he kept it on and watched as people made up something undoubtedly more terrifying than himself to go underneath it.

The bartender set his drink down with a bland smile that didn’t reach his glazed eyes, and Kylo slid a credit chip wordlessly across the counter before he grabbed it and stood, only for the drink to be unceremoniously spilled all down his front as something hit him full-force, almost knocking him back into the barstool.

The rage curled in his chest, a slithering monster whose toothed snarl made Kylo’s fingers tingle, but before he could open his mouth and snap at the offender he felt hands grab at his arms as the stranger steadied himself, giving Kylo an uninterrupted view of slicked-back hair that shone almost purple in the pulsing lights of the club and a shock of colourless fabric that seemed to be doing its best to swallow its owner up completely.

“Move,” Kylo hissed, reaching up to push the man away and remove himself from the situation, but before he could a pair of Weequay blocked his exit, one of them hissing something low and insulting as they pointed at the man who was now clutching Kylo’s clothed biceps as though his life depended on it, and listening to the Weequay’s threats, Kylo figured it did. Something soft within him stirred, told him to help, to diffuse the situation, but he smothered it when the feeling took on a familiar voice, high and feminine and achingly familiar in its youth, accompanied by the image of Skywalker looking at him with disappointment, but he pushed it away with a snarl—Skywalker had always been disappointed in him, and somehow being the recipient of that stare had been so much worse than Han Solo refusing to look at him at all. This wasn’t his issue, and this man wasn’t his problem.

“I don’t _understand_ you, you disgusting creature,” the man was saying after the Weequay repeated his threats for the third time, and while the man may not have understood his companions, it was clear they understood Basic all too well by the way their voices got louder and their expressions angrier, eyes flashing dangerously from their sunken sockets. Kylo grimaced, the mask hiding the expression, and he felt his fingers twitch for the weapons concealed at his side before he forced his body to remain still while the man turned quickly and drew himself to a not-unimpressive height, his back now to Kylo, who remained caught between the stranger and the bar, anger simmering under his skin. Still, he didn’t use the opportunity to slip away, to move. It was something he’d chastise himself for later, he was sure. Stay out of trouble, keep low, and if you must make a scene, ensure it is traceable only to an alias instead of a face. For the moment he merely flicked his eyes back to the bartender, the urge to whisper another soundless suggestion strong, before his attention was caught once again by crisp, defined syllables—an accent, old and familiar in cadence, that didn’t belong in a place like this. His breath caught, and he didn’t understand why he suddenly felt compelled to remain.

“Speak Basic,” the man snapped as one of the two Weequay repeated themselves in a series of angry, guttural noises. “I don’t understand your barbaric tongue.”

“They want their credits,” Kylo translated lowly, surprising himself, something old and beyond boredom prompting him to speak, watching as the Weequays glanced between himself and the stranger. When the man didn’t respond, Kylo continued, “You didn’t pay them what they were owed.”

The man finally looked back at him, and Kylo was treated to an eyeful of defined cheekbones, an impressive sneer, and eyes whose colour was impossible to discern in the multi-coloured lighting. “I paid them the amount we agreed on. It isn’t my fault if—“ he cut himself off, as if realising he was speaking to a stranger when Kylo’s eyes raked over his body, catching on the way the stranger’s gloved hands were curled into fists at his side, body practically vibrating with energy. Still, to the man’s credit, his speech didn’t falter as he turned back to the Weequay men and said, in a steely tone, “You got your money. Perhaps next time it would do you good to check what kind of currency you’re to receive before agreeing to a contract.”

Kylo snorted, turning his face to the side as the man’s shoulders stiffened and the Weequay erupted in a series of threatening snarls and promises to paint their hull with the man’s blood, using the opportunity to survey the man further.

The club lights made it hard to tell, but Kylo tilted his head carefully to the side as he observed the man’s cheeks flush hotly, anger emanating from him in waves, but beneath the anger Kylo could sense _anxiety_ , and he raked his eyes over the man’s body once more before smothering a low sigh of frustration as he registered what was very clearly a uniform of some kind, personally tailored, and very out of place. It was probably smart looking once, but the heat of the club had creased the fabric, something the man seemed to realise as he grimaced and tried to straighten it out while his companions scowled bloody murder. His hair, too, was styled to order, slicked back with only a few strands escaping in the heat of the club. That wasn’t what caught Kylo’s attention, though. Rather, it was the stripes on the man’s sleeve denoting rank in the old Imperial system, and Kylo sucked in a breath as his eyes snapped back to the stranger’s face, revisiting a previous train of thought and added _members of an outdated Imperial military outfit_ to his list of things that stood out on the Smuggler’s Moon. _You don’t belong here_ , he whispered mentally, though without the Force to guide the thought into the man’s mind. _Get out get out get out_.

Instead of voicing this, however, Kylo merely said, “He says the money you paid them with is useless. As useless as Republic credits.”

“I see,” the man replied, mercurial eyes sweeping with ill-contained disdain over the two, and before the man could say something else to make the situation Kylo cut in, his hand twitching, putting the weight of the Force behind his words as he said, as persuasively as possible, “You have been paid. You made a mistake. Learn from it and leave us be.”

There was a moment where Kylo wasn’t sure it had worked, but then the two men straightened and walked away with a few choice words. Kylo breathed out, eyes flickering to the man, whose mouth had opened in what was no doubt something cutting, but before he could say whatever it was Kylo reached out, curling his fingers over the Imperial stripes on the man’s arm and hauling him away, uncaring of the way the man squawked and demanded to be released _immediately_.

“Look,” Kylo said as he shoved the redhead into the little booth he and Bia had been sharing, uncaring of the way she watched them with an almost childlike curiosity and moved to accommodate their new guest, “you’re not from around here, I get it, but those two men were moments from cracking your skull over the barstool. It would have killed the mood. My friend would’ve been upset.” He didn’t know whether that was true. Madana, wherever he was, hated abundant negativity, as most members of his species did, but he also enjoyed watching fools die as much as the next person, so perhaps he would have preferred it if Kylo had left the stranger there to face a likely death. It didn’t matter now.

The man looked at him with narrowed eyes, his fingers jerking on the tabletop, and Kylo didn’t miss the way his lip curled when he noticed Bia sitting there, lekku twitching with amused interest at their new table guest.

Kylo curled his own fingers inward, thinking of how they’d been wrapped around that telltale stripe earlier, and wasn’t fate funny, making him run into a member of some Imperial remnant out here where even the Empire hadn’t managed to fully exert its will. It seemed _legacy_ was never something fully outrun.

The man’s face was still pinched unattractively, and Kylo didn’t even bother voicing the snide _you’re welcome_ that was poised on the tip of his tongue. If what the man had said was true, and the men he’d contracted had merely failed to check and see what currency they’d be paid in, Kylo had little sympathy for them. It was a rookie mistake, one he would’ve made himself had he not had Madana to help guide him once control of the _Myrmidon_ had fallen to him, but he didn’t voice that to the stranger. Doubtless he was aware.

The silence grew pervasive, and after a few moments Bia rolled her eyes and rose to her feet, crossing her arms pointedly before she shimmied out of the booth.

“I’ll go find Madana, boss,” she said, and before Kylo could formulate a response she was gone, lost to the gyrating bodies and psychedelic club lights.

“Hux,” the man said abruptly, and Kylo jerked slightly in surprise, raising an eyebrow as he turned his attention back to the man, whose expression was now creased with an odd sort of determination. He didn’t even pretend to ask what _Hux_ meant when it was obviously the man’s name. Whether it was his first, his last, or his only name didn’t matter, and so Kylo didn’t ask as Hux extended his hand, instead taking a few moments to stare at it before he realised, somewhat belatedly, that he was supposed to _shake_ it, which he did with a too-tight grip and carefully controlled movements. “That _woman_ called you her boss,” Hux said as he did so, voice stiff. “Might I ask who you are?”

Kylo’s mouth twitched, hidden by the mask and, unable to resist, he replied, “The man who pays her wages.”

He laughed—a short, harsh sound—when Hux’s brow drew together in irritation before he leaned across the table, his hand still gripping Hux’s and pressing it down.

“You’re new here,” Kylo said, voice gravelly, “so I’ll give you some advice.” Then he sat back, cocking his head to the side absently as Hux flexed his wrist with narrowed eyes. “Never go anywhere alone, and if you do, hide your disdain better. In places like this, you’ll be dead and rotting before anyone knows to miss you otherwise, regardless of who you work for.” His eyes swept Hux’s uniformed body pointedly, and when Hux’s lips drew into a sneer and he began to speak, a sharp _do you think I enjoy coming to cesspools like this_ , Kylo overrode him by saying simply, bluntly, “I’m Kylo.”

A delicate flush coloured Hux’s high cheekbones, likely borne of frustration, and Kylo watched, unabashed, as it spread. “Kylo. Never heard of you.”

Kylo shrugged. “I’ve never heard of you either, _Hux_.” The emphasis was deliberate, as was the lowering of his voice and the way he bit down on that last consonant, letting it slip between his teeth in a hiss, and he watched as Hux’s face twitched minutely, the red flush still there, amusement slowly replacing the anger that had been festering since Hux has spilt his newly-acquired drink all over him. He’d have to change clothes once he got back to the _Myrmidon_ , but he filed that thought away for later.

“You’re not going to ask why those men were accosting me?” Hux asked idly, but something in the sharpness of his gaze told Kylo it wasn’t a simple question. He felt his own brow crease in confusion.

“I don’t care,” he answered, and it was true. Those who tried to know everyone else’s business on Nar Shaddaa either found themselves really rich or really dead in short order, and Kylo knew better than most that sometimes knowing was far worse than being kept in the dark. If people thought you knew something important, it was always a race to see who could get to you first: the people who wanted to profit off your knowledge, or those who wanted to ensure that knowledge never got out. Kylo, privy to many secrets, knew that all too well, and so he kept his mouth shut and held onto the information until such a time where it became vital. He wasn’t Han Solo, notorious for being able to charm and bluff and placate his way out of any situation, and he didn’t want to be. He’d had enough of smiling and lying and concealing in his first two decades of life, and he wasn’t about to mess up his operation and put Madana and Bia in danger only two years into their joint ventures. He may pilot the ship and act as the unofficial leader of the group, but he left diplomacy to them, where it was best handled.

Hux was looking at him, his mouth set thoughtfully in a way that made his sharp face appear softer, eyes glimmering briefly as one of the club’s lights travelled over their little booth, lighting them up. Kylo blinked and leaned forward without thinking. He wondered, abruptly, what colour Hux’s eyes were.

“Hm,” Hux said. “Kylo, was it?” Kylo inclined his head, suddenly very conscious of the way Hux’s eyes roamed his covered face, his body, drawing him in and mapping everything he could see, as if searching for something. Kylo’s eyes lowered. There was nothing to map, not with his entire person swathed in plated, irregular leathers and dark fabric that concealed the weapons at his hip. When he’d started out, he’d still had his robes, but, well. He’d gotten rid of those years ago, when he’d put Ben Organa-Solo away where he could never disappoint anyone ever again.

“Kylo,” Madana had said when he’d first heard the name spoken in a stammering, defensive tone. Madana had sensed the lie instantly, Kylo knew that now, able to read Kylo’s messy emotions with an ease that would later embarrass him, but at the time Madana had merely smiled instead of calling it out. “Nice to meet you. I’m Madana.”

Hux didn’t say his name like Madana had. He said it slowly, and Kylo wasn’t sure he liked how it rolled off Hux’s tongue, but it was achingly familiar. If Hux’s voice was softer, higher, more _feminine_ , it would’ve been all too easy to imagine someone else sitting across from him. He clenched his teeth.

 _No_.

“What currency did you pay them in?” Kylo said suddenly, eager to redirect his thoughts. Hux raised an eyebrow. “The Weequay.”

“Ah.” There was a pause as Hux seemed to think his answer through. Then he leaned against the back of the booth with an unconcerned expression. “Something that wasn’t satisfactory, evidently enough. I shall rectify that mistake the next time I’m in the area and notify my superior officers. Don’t look so surprised,” he said when Kylo gave a small start, “I saw you looking at my uniform.”

“You could have played it off,” Kylo said. Hux smiled, and Kylo was inexplicably reminded of a karkarodon.

“Perhaps I’m planning to kill you later.”

The idea of this out-of-place officer trying to kill him, when better men had tried and failed, was enough to startle another bark of laughter from Kylo. He didn’t answer beyond that, however, and when he saw Hux’s eyes flicker to his mask he shifted his weight, oddly conscious of it all of a sudden. Hux didn’t ask, however, despite the curiosity Kylo could glean from his surface thoughts, and Kylo wondered how long this newfound game of question avoidance would last before it grew too awkward and Hux took his leave and reported back to whatever one of the various Imperial remnant groups he so clearly belonged to.

For lack of anything better to say, Kylo voiced that very question.

“Just how many groups do you think there are?” Hux asked. Kylo shrugged, fingers curling and uncurling from his palm.

“There are a lot of Imperial remnants,” he said bluntly. “From what I know, there used to be even more, but the New Republic did its best to root them out. It’d be foolish to think them all gone. I can list three off the top of my head.”

Hux’s eyes narrowed. “Name them,” he said, his voice suddenly heated. Kylo paused, weighing the pros and cons of complying, and then wondered why in the hell he cared if Hux knew or not. The New Republic had long gone soft on their hunt for old Imperial cells, if the news he heard from the Core Worlds was to be believed. In years past, it had been the source of one of Leia Organa’s greatest frustrations, and sometimes Kylo wondered why she’d been surprised. The old political system had been her life, more than he had ever been, but he’d often wondered why she’d seemed to blind to its faults, and he wondered why she hadn’t been able to prevent the New Republic from returning so swiftly to the corrupted, complacent days before the Empire, if she insisted on dedicating so much of her life to something so clearly broken.

“There’s a cell hiding on Dxun,” Kylo told him.

“The moon of Onderon? In the Inner Rim? And the New Republic does nothing about it?”

Kylo shrugged. “The New Republic isn’t known for acting, only for closing their eyes. Dxun is littered with old ruins and hidden tombs.” He pretended not to notice the way Hux’s face abruptly became more interested. When Hux asked him to go on, his voice softer this time, Kylo blinked, but continued: “There were some holdouts in the Arkanis sector as well, but nothing ever came of it. Many people thought there might be remnants on Geonosis because of its history, but it was too close to—“ too close to Skywalker. Kylo swallowed, remembering the blistering heat of Tatooine and a partially rebuilt homestead in the middle of a great desert. “There used to be an old Imperial training academy on Arkanis itself. It’s long gone, though. The New Republic ensured that.” He breathed out, watching as Hux’s face abruptly shuttered, and for the first time wondered how old Hux was. He was guessing around his age, surely not out of his twenties, but. Well. Appearances could be deceiving. Skywalker had taken them to Arkanis once, when Kylo was old enough to be trusted watching some of the other older students. It had been one of the few times they’d been allowed to leave Tatooine, he recalled now.

Skywalker hadn’t liked letting him out of his sight for too long, after the incident.

He rattled off the next two locations with a curt tone before hunching into his seat. After a moment he heard Hux shift.

“You don’t like the New Republic.”

“I don’t like many governments,” Kylo said stiffly, discomfort making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. “Issues with authority. I hear it runs in the family. I break the law as often as I can. Are we really discussing politics in a crummy club on Nar Shaddaa?”

He heard rather than saw Hux’s smile. “I suppose we are. You’re a smuggler.” It wasn’t a question.

“Bravo. Did the Smuggler’s Moon give it away? You had a one and three chance of guessing that.”

“This moon is a cesspit, you know.” Hux sounded disgusted as it said it, but there was something else, something that made Kylo look up at him from under his cowl, because there, buried deep in Hux’s voice was _anger_ , deep-seeded and dark, and Kylo wondered just where that stemmed from. “It’s chaotic. There’s no authority.”

“There are the Hutts. This is Hutt Space, Hux.”

“The Hutts are content with seeding chaos and disorder wherever they go,” Hux said, the corners of his mouth lifting in a barely-there snarl. “They are no more fit to rule than the Republic. It’s a wonder they have clung to power this long, happy as they are to let things run their course, killing each other for power and gain. They’re a bunch of crime lords. There’s no order. There’s no logic. No _true_ authority.”

Kylo laughed, but it was devoid of amusement. “There is,” he said, angling his head subtly towards where a pair of non-human were listening in, “and you’ll find it if you don’t keep your voice down.”

Hux’s mouth snapped shut, and this time the flush on his face was definitely anger, but there was a passionate spark in his eyes and Kylo was seized with the sudden urge to reach out and touch, to see if Hux’s skin would be hot under his fingertips, burning with vitriol for a cause Kylo did not yet know. He realised, somewhat belatedly, that Hux had a nice face. He supposed someone at this table ought to, now that Madana and Bia were mingling with the crowd. Stars knew he wouldn’t be winning any contests with his own, looking as it did.

“Well,” Hux said curtly, standing, “I should leave. My pilot will be expecting me to have secured the payment and have returned. My delay won’t be appreciated.”

Kylo was about to open his mouth and say something, perhaps to tell Hux to not get shot on the docks or, more inanely, to _stay_ , but he swallowed the words when a prickle of abruptly unease seized him, head snapping up as he watched several armed men begin to push their way through the club, and before he could stop himself he’d seized Hux’s wrists and forced him to sit back down, silencing him with a hiss when Hux began to protest.

“Your friends are back, and they brought backup,” Kylo said, watching as the colour in Hux’s cheeks drained as he caught sight of them. “You’re popular tonight, Hux.”

“I need to get to my ship,” Hux said, and Kylo snorted.

“By all means, just walk out there. Are you even _armed_?”

“Yes,” Hux said, but when he refused to elaborate Kylo just snarled, especially when one of the two Weequay men from earlier caught sight of them and pointed angrily. People in the club were starting to shift worriedly, the spell of the mediocre pulsing music broken as it became clear the crew of Weequay were armed, but it wasn’t until one of the men fired a premature shot at them that people began to scream and push towards one of the exits, Kylo swearing lowly when the Weequay hissed at them and began moving their way, his blood boiling once he realised that he’d been incorrectly identified as working with Hux.

“Get out,” he snapped, but Hux was already moving, his face a mask of concentration as he dodged a shot and slipped into the crowd. Somewhere he could sense Bia’s pressing worry and Madana’s anxiety, and he had just enough time to send Bia an impression of the _Myrmidon_ and orders for her and Madana to retreat there before another shot shattered one of the glowing advertisement screens that had been situated by the booth. People were scrambling openly now, but it was a testament to the lawlessness of this place that the noise level was down. Nar Shaddaa wasn’t Coruscant—people knew when to get the hell out, and get the hell out _fast_.

His hand found Hux’s wrist after a few moments of scrambling, the stink of Nar Shaddaa hitting him as they exited the club, but his intentions of hauling Hux bodily into some alleyway or another were disrupted when Hux gave his wrist an abrupt tug, pulling Kylo, who was unprepared, in his direction. Kylo barely had time to register that Hux’s hair was a brilliant, shining _red_ before they were running.

“I need to get to my ship,” Hux repeated, and Kylo hissed. He should have left Hux to get his skull cracked in, he shouldn’t have intervened, but he _had_ and for some reason he found his feet obeying Hux’s command as they scrambled through the dirty platforms that made up part of the Entertainment Promenade, moving as quickly as they could towards the docks, where the _Myrmidon_ and, apparently, Hux’s ship were sitting.

“How wonderfully charismatic you are, Hux. What were you in a past life, a stormtrooper?” Kylo snarked, abruptly grateful that he and Hux seemed to be of a similar height, allowing them to match strides.

“In my father’s wildest dreams,” Hux replied, but Kylo didn’t have time to ponder the harshness of the words, for another shot rang out behind them, and when he reached the turnoff to where the _Myrmidon_ was docked he swore when he saw a bunch of armed mercs running towards them, blaster rifles firing wildly. Hux reacted quickly, pulling Kylo along with him, leaving Kylo to wonder when their positions had switched as he registered Hux’s hands wrapped around his wrist, but he didn’t ponder that too long, not when the urge to call on the Force was suddenly so strong, _too_ strong, telling him to lash out, that he could crush these men with ease. The urge was harder to ignore the more they ran, guiding him forward, the surrounding him and almost _begging_ to be indulged. He could kill everyone here. He could call upon the hated gift that was his birthright and he could crush them, could revel in the way they screamed as he pushed them over the side of the dock into the nothingness of Nar Shaddaa’s shadowy ground level, but he couldn’t, not really, because there were too many witnesses and he couldn’t hope to get rid of them all and a Jedi on Nar Shaddaa would be something too big to ignore. So he grimaced and followed Hux, knowing Madana and Bia were more than capable of taking care of themselves.

“Bloody aliens,” Hux snarled as they moved. Kylo considered tripping him and leaving him to his fate, but something stayed his hand. Instead, he glanced behind them, and when Hux wasn’t looking he reached out with the Force and watched with satisfaction as a stack of plasteel cylinders and crates mysteriously toppled from the wall they’d been set against, the enraged shrieks of their pursuers filling him with glee and adrenaline. A few more metres had them rounding a corner, and perhaps, were this any other time, Kylo would have taken a moment to appreciate the surprisingly sleek design of the ship that lay waiting on the landing pad, obviously an upgraded version of an old Imperial shuttle—something that once would’ve caught more attention on Nar Shaddaa had the market not been saturated with them after the fall of the Empire. They were rarer now, of course, but the initial flood of them on the black market had ensured few people blinked at seeing them in the fringes of space now.

“Are you just going to stare, or are you going to do something?” Hux snapped before he called out to someone, hurrying up the lowered gangplank.

“Hux, wait—“ Kylo started, voice muffled by the mask, picking up his pace when he felt that prickle of _wrongness_ again, and he reached Hux just in time to yank him back as a shot fired from inside the shuttle, crashing to the ground with a pained grunt as something hot struck his shoulder. He pushed Hux away from him when a shadowy figure emerged from within the bowels of the ship, dragging something behind them. Distantly, he registered that his cowl had fallen back.

“Your pilot didn’t want to negotiate,” the figure said in Basic, punctuating their statement by kicking a lifeless body down the gangplank and emerging fully, revealing another Weequay. “Such a shame. But I’m bored with this chase. The money you paid my crew with is useless. I’m here to collect what we’re due, one way or another.”

“I paid you. There’s nothing else to give,” Hux said through gritted teeth, something awful and dark in his eyes as he looked up through his newly loosened red hair at the body of the pilot laying limply on the dock.

 _Young_ , Kylo thought, his own eyes flicking from the body to Hux, tuning out the demands of the Weequay captain and breathing in, out, anything to steady his racing heart and keep the dark whispers at bay. His hands twitched again, aching for the weapons he kept hidden, the ones he had been trained to use ever since he was old enough for his parents to fear him, but he let his hand slip to his blaster instead. _Stupid_ , he thought, _this entire situation is stupid_ , but that was life on Nar Shaddaa, wasn’t it? Absurd situations. Illogical situations. It was why he couldn’t do anything but laugh wetly when a blaster sounded and the Weequay captain toppled over mid-demand, the darkness curling in his chest shrieking with irritation that it hadn’t been he who pulled the trigger.

His life was a terrible holodrama. This was something that wouldn’t have been out of place in the life of Han Solo, and with that thought came more anger and the sudden need to flee because he’d sworn it wouldn’t be like this, he’d sworn he’d keep out of drama, and then Hux had showed up and now he was—

Hux’s face was a terrible mask of cold anger, the hand holding a precision pistol still outstretched from where he lay next to Kylo on the ground, and Kylo wondered if Hux had considered this possibility at all when he’d flounced in from his no-doubt fancy mothership and picked a random club on Nar Shaddaa to do business in; if he’d thought, even for a second, that he and his pilot wouldn’t make it out alive.

He closed his eyes, reaching out with the Force, and when he met a firm wall of _grief_ in Hux’s mind Kylo knew he hadn’t. He wondered if the pilot had meant anything to Hux or if he was just shocked that his plan had gone to ruin, but there was nothing for it now. He could push into Hux’s mind and extract what he wanted, he knew. It would be easy, and Hux wouldn’t have been able to stop him, but it didn’t matter, so all Kylo did was laugh lowly and push himself up from the ground, avoiding the pilot’s body. He’d seen worse, _done_ worse—his career may have been as a smuggler but there was no shortage of violence in the galaxy. He’d killed his first man only two weeks into his original flight on the _Myrmidon_ , and his hands hovered over his hips before he looked down at Hux, who was now staring at the body of the fallen Weequay as though he were scum beneath his once-polished boot.

“Your first?” Kylo said, nudging the body with his foot. He didn’t offer to help Hux up, and Hux didn’t answer his question. Instead, Hux merely shifted his eyes between the two bodies, and it wasn’t until they heard a series of raised voice that he pushed himself slowly to his feet, striding past Kylo and up the gangplank.

“Can you fly?” he asked lowly. Kylo’s eyes flickered down the dock, where a group of Weequay, having freed themselves from Kylo’s earlier entrapment, were running towards them.

“Yes,” he said, and was up the gangplank and into the ship before Hux could say anything, retrieving his comm and barking a series of instructions to Madana and Bia as Hux led him to the cockpit.

“Not worried about trusting a stranger with your ship?” Kylo murmured as he sat down, priming the engines and hurriedly activating the ship’s shields as the first blaster shots began to reach them.

“More worried about trusting my skull to a bunch of men whose captain I just killed,” Hux said. Kylo grunted and did him the favour of not commenting on the toneless quality Hux’s voice had taken on, making the sharp consonants seem dead and lifeless. Whether the pilot meant shit wasn’t his business, and though he could feel some stirring of pity ( _weak_ , the part of his mind that was still that frightened fifteen-year-old hissed) he didn’t let it affect his flying as he lifted Hux’s ship off the landing platform and into the busy skies of Nar Shaddaa, heading for the moon’s atmosphere and the stars beyond.

“Where are we going?” Kylo asked. “Hux!” he snapped when Hux didn’t respond, but then Hux turned his head to him and Kylo sucked in a breath, suddenly unable to get enough air through the mask. In the light of the cockpit Hux’s eyes were a deep, otherworldly green, but he turned to the console and pursed his lips, brow creasing in thought before he stood and leaned over Kylo’s shoulder, punching in a coordinate Kylo didn’t recognise. Kylo exhaled, but he turned his attention back to the transparisteel and all that lay beyond it, and within moments they were making the jump to hyperspace, the glittering stars giving way to a seemingly never-ending tunnel of blue.

“Fuck,” Kylo muttered after a few moments, his mind finally coming down off the high of adrenaline as he stared straight ahead. He was surprised when Hux laughed roughly beside him, and it was enough to make Kylo’s shoulders relax. Hux’s face, when he turned to look at him, was still pinched, but it was beginning to lose that terrible coldness.

“Oh,” Hux said as Kylo turned to meet his gaze, and for a moment Kylo was seized with panic, his hand fluttering up to check to see that his mask was there and sighing in shaky relief when he found it was. His cowl, however, had fallen back, and he vaguely remembered noticing that whilst sprawled on the dirty panelling of the landing strip. Nervously, almost self-consciously, he ran a hand through the dark strands of his hair, and it was then the pain in his shoulder decided to make itself known again. He winced, the motion mostly hidden by the mask, but the way Hux’s eyes snapped sharply to the injury let Kylo know it hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“Up,” Hux commanded, and Kylo rose without thinking before he scowled.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not. You’re piloting my ship sight unseen. Let me do this for you.” Hux’s tone brokered no argument, and Kylo’s eyes narrowed in response. He stood, drawing himself to his full height and using every physical advantage he had, from his broader shoulders to the scant few inches he had over Hux, but despite his best attempts at projecting _leave it_ , the determined look on Hux’s face remained, unyielding. It was a nice face, Kylo realised, faltering slightly, and Hux’s mouth twitched as he recognised victory in the way Kylo suddenly turned his head away.

“You look ridiculous, you know,” Hux said as he led Kylo to one of the benches in a small room. In some models Kylo knew there would have been a medidroid of some kind, but they hadn’t that luxury.

“Do I?”

“With the mask. Without your hood.”

Kylo hummed. “I’d look more ridiculous if I didn't wear the mask,” he said, voice matter-of-fact, and Hux shot him a sharp, considering look as he pulled a medpac from a tiny compartment in the wall.

“Sit,” he said, and Kylo did so wordlessly, suddenly at a loss for what to do and feeling awkward in this confined space. The urge to run struck him, but there was nowhere he could go. He’d _committed_ , and in his haste, in his desire to get away and in the chaos that he had allowed himself to succumb to, he hadn’t paused to think about what he’d committed to. For the first time in years he felt sheer panic grip his chest. He didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t know how he was going to get back, and the part of him that had once answered to _Ben_ woke again and started screaming in his head, lost and alone with nowhere to go and nothing to hold onto but anger and bitterness and empty resolution.

 _Stop_ , he told himself when he realised Hux was watching him.

“Kylo isn’t your real name. You’re running,” Hux said then. Kylo tensed instinctively.

“Give me the medpac,” he said. If Hux heard the dark threat in his voice, he didn’t react, but why would he? Hux didn’t know, despite his words. He didn’t know. He had no reason to know. He _couldn’t_ know. If he did, Kylo could reach out and destroy Hux’s mind from the inside-out and the other man would be absolutely powerless to stop him, or he could use the Force to constrict Hux’s throat, watching in satisfaction as Hux clawed at the invisible grip, or—

 _Weak_ , a familiar voice hissed again, dark and ominous and so much larger than Ben Organa-Solo had been. He’d been lost to that voice once, back when it had promised him everything he could have dreamed of if he could just shed that last bit of weakness, if he would just surrender to it, to _him_ , and with the remembrance came another surge of anger and the ugly, black feeling of hopelessness, of not being in control, of not being strong enough.

This was why his parents had sent him away. Because he was weak. He’d been too weak to hold their love and attention, and when he’d cried and clung to his father’s legs his parents had sensed that weakness and left him on Tatooine. He’d been Skywalker’s problem after that, and Skywalker had tried, his large brown eyes filled with compassion and pity, things that had gradually turned to fear when he sensed the darkness within Ben, too.

In many ways, Kylo thought he hated Skywalker more than his parents for what he’d done, taking away the hissing voice that had been Ben's only friend, his only source of understanding, but that was a different life, when Ben Organa-Solo had been the most promising of Skywalker’s pupils, his command of the Force unrivalled. Now he was Kylo, just Kylo, and he clung to that and let it draw him back into the present, jerking when he realised Hux had cut away part of his attire, peeling away the smouldering cloth and leather without him realising.

“Oh, good,” Hux said as he slowly pulled his own glove off with his teeth. “You’re back.” Then Kylo felt the cold, gelatinous sensation of bacta on his skin as Hux continued his work, his touch oddly soothing, making Kylo’s skin tingle where he made contact. Hux’s hands were delicate, Kylo thought, and unable to wrap fully around Kylo’s wrists, Hux’s own wrists so small that Kylo thought it surprising they hadn’t broken under his rough handling. He could see a faint ring of bruises around the thin skin, but Hux applied the bacta with a precision that spoke of experience and despite himself, Kylo felt his body relaxing at the familiar sensation of having his wounds treated, lulled into a strange sense of complacency. He felt the urge to turn his head, to explore with his tongue and teeth whether Hux’s skin was as thin and delicate as it looked, but he let those thoughts drift away as if on a current, focusing instead on the steady movement of Hux’s hands as he spread the bacta over the blaster wound and wiped up the blood.

Hux breathed out from between slightly pursed lips, and the sudden cold against his arm made Kylo look down and blink with surprise, unconcerned with the way his still-gloved hand had migrated to grip Hux’s hip.

“You cut it,” he said. Hux’s eyes seemed glued to his now-exposed arm. In his eyes was a touch of heat that made Kylo’s lungs seize momentarily.

“I did,” came the reply. “Kylo, it was fused to your skin.” A pause. “But then again, you don’t seem surprised. Did you even feel it when I peeled it away?”

Kylo shrugged with one shoulder, never taking his eyes off the other man. “I’ve been around. Lots of running. You didn’t need to cut the whole sleeve off.” If he’d hoped the words would make Hux feel guilty about the sleeve or his earlier comment, he was doomed to disappointment, for Hux’s eyes merely flicked up to his face in ill-contained irritation before they refocused on his wounds. After a few moments Kylo asked, lowly, “who are you, and where are we going?”

“The Unknown Regions, as the Republic calls it,” Hux said, and that toneless note was back in his voice. He avoided the first question, but he started when Kylo reached out, seizing one bacta-covered hand with his own gloved one. He didn’t miss how his hand dwarfed Hux’s, and it made something hot flare in his gut. Hux was _small._

“Who are you?” Kylo asked, eyes intent. Hux wavered.

“Take off the mask,” Hux said finally, firmly, “and I will tell you. A fair trade.”

It was Kylo’s turn to hesitate, and the part of him that had been concealing himself for so long railed against the request, but after a few moments he closed his eyes and reached up, removing the shaped leather from his face, meeting Hux’s gaze dead-on when he pulled it away entirely.

Kylo had never been much to look at before. Whatever combination of traits that'd given Organa her elegant grace and Solo his roguish charm had clearly clashed and waged an all-out war in their son. As a child his face had been rounder, like his mother’s, his eyes the same colour brown, but as he’d aged the shape became more reminiscent of Solo. The curl of his dark hair, too, was his father’s, though the colour was darker than either of his parents possessed, and the texture of his skin was different as well. Perhaps more people would have recognised him for who he had once been were it not for the three jagged scars that stretched diagonally across his face from his left cheekbone to the curve of his jaw, splitting his top and bottom lip. He’d made sure the mask hid it when he constructed it out of stiff black leather, adding intricate purple mesh patterns in the cracks that would allow him to breathe through it.

Hux’s breath caught, and Kylo watched as his paper-thin lids lowered, one bacta-covered hand lifting to tilt Kylo’s chin up, studying him with the careful consideration one might give a jumpy animal. Kylo could feel Hux’s hands vibrate where they touched, and he sucked in a breath, leaning forward unconsciously. _Lookatmedon’tlookatme_ , his mind screamed at Hux, this stranger who was staring at him with ill-contained fascination. He closed his eyes with a small grimace and felt Hux’s other hand skim over the scars. Kylo allowed him his curiosity, feeling lost when he heard the faint whispers of Hux’s mind— _strangealluringwhydoyouhide_. He didn’t know what to do with those thoughts, so he lowered his head, his face reddening, feeling Hux’s knuckles graze his forehead.

“Major Armitage Hux,” Hux whispered then. “We’re going to a planet called Lehon, beyond wild space. ETA seven hours.”

“In the Unknown Regions,” Kylo murmured, eyes opening slowly, the bacta on Hux’s one hand beginning to soak into the skin of his jaw. Hux’s hands were warm. He liked them there, even if part of him wanted to jerk back, to spurn this touch.

“Unknown Regions,” Hux said lowly. There was a sneer in his voice, faint, and the hand at Kylo’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “They’re only called that because the Republic, in its arrogance, believed nothing of important to exist out there, and so it remains uncharted to them even now. The Empire knew better. There is far more out there than the Republic could ever hope; resources that the Republic cannot command. That’s why the Hand is there. That’s why, when Organa and her insipid Rebellion defeated the Emperor, some of the remnants fled where they knew they would not be pursued. The wise among them recognised that the New Republic would become too complacent to mount a competent response.”

“Should you be telling me this?” Kylo asked, leaning forward, and Hux laughed quietly.

“Probably not.” His hand fell away from Kylo’s face, and Kylo felt strangely bereft. “But you’re a smuggler. Everyone knows they lie.”

Kylo’s mouth twitched. He wasn’t stupid enough to think Hux missed it.

“I pictured the return trip differently,” Hux admitted then. “I failed to account for currency changes. My superiors won’t be happy when I return without the tibanna gas, but perhaps…” he trailed off, and Kylo didn’t prompt him. His mind was whispering again, pieces of information he’d gleaned from some of his more reclusive contacts. _They’re moving out there,_ he remembered hearing his mother say on some hologram he’d watched, legs curled against his chest as he, Skywalker, and Skywalker’s other students rode out one of the many sandstorms on Tatooine. _They’re moving out there, and they’re dangerous. They call themselves the First Order, and they’re different than the rest._

“The First Order,” Kylo breathed, and he watched in vague satisfaction as Hux’s head snapped up, something cruel glittering in his eyes before he snuffed it out. “That’s who you are. Major Armitage Hux of the First Order.” Hux’s eyes were appraising, and something like pride unfurled in his mind as Kylo spoke those last two words aloud. Kylo was old enough to recognise the gleam of fanaticism.

“The New Republic is weak and complacent. You see it as I have,” he said, voice almost reverently soft. He pushed a hand through his red hair, long since fallen out of the slicked style he’d had it in at the club, and the action left wet streaks of bacta behind, darkening his red hair in places. “They will realise, in time, that they were foolish to let their guard down so early.”

“The galaxy does not need another war,” Kylo said.

“Then perhaps they should open their eyes.”

Kylo was silent for a few moments, simply taking the time to breathe. _Fanatic_ , his mind whispered. _He’s dangerous_. A terrible part of him, the part that had been struck by the green of Hux’s eyes and the passion of his earlier convictions( _he’s not wrong, you know the New Republic is weak_ ), told him it didn’t matter, so he met Hux’s eyes calmly and said, “You are not worried I’ll tell the galaxy of your existence. You’re not worried that I’ll report your location to the New Republic.” It wasn’t a question, not when Hux’s smug surety was so clear to him, even without the use of the Force.

“Organa has already tried, and all it got her was ridicule. The Republic kissed the ground she walked on when she handed the reigns back to them, and now that she is not telling them what they want to hear they have branded her a warmonger. I hear she left the Senate. How soon they forget. I have been taught the failings of the Republic all my life. It’s time the New Republic learned them, too.” Hux’s eyes looked momentarily far away, but when they snapped back to Kylo’s face they were hard, assured, and Kylo could feel the conviction behind Hux’s every word as he said, his hand slipping to the wound on the back of Kylo’s shoulder, “we will not make the same mistakes twice. You’re a smuggler, Kylo,” he repeated. “You could try to tell them, but who would believe you?”

 _My mother_ , Kylo’s thoughts hissed. _My father. And they would rally the galaxy_.

Something uneasy churned in Kylo’s gut, and for a moment he wondered if Hux knew, if he saw Leia Organa in Kylo’s face. Would Hux laugh, Kylo wondered, if he knew he was talking to Leia Organa’s son? Would he be touching Kylo’s skin with such absent reverence if he knew what Kylo was? When he was born, the galaxy had hailed Ben Organa-Solo as a symbol of peace. He’d been the poster child for a new future, the son of the galaxy’s most celebrated war heroes, born just nine months after the Battle of Yavin, and to many, he’d symbolised a new age; a generation born never knowing the Empire.

He thought then of the secret his mother had hidden from him and his mouth quirked into a bitter smile. The galaxy would have sung a different tune if they’d known from the moment of his birth just how deep the Empire’s legacy was entrenched in their heroes and the bright new future their son was supposed to have represented.

“The pilot,” Kylo said suddenly. Hux’s nails, curling into the bacta on Kylo’s shoulder, stopped. Kylo leaned into the touch, breathing out. “Were you two friends?”

There was a pause. “No,” Hux said brusquely. He withdrew his hand again, fingers slipping briefly down Kylo’s bared arm before Hux wiped them on the leather plates of Kylo’s pants, but Kylo kept his gaze heavy and insistent, knowing the lie and choosing to call it out, silently. “There are no friends in the First Order, Kylo. That’s the rule.”

It was another lie. Ben Organa-Solo had been strangely attuned to the minds of others as a young Padawan, a trait that had earned him the wariness of his father and his teacher, and Kylo had retained that trait, honing it over the years even before departing Skywalker’s academy until he could glean surface thoughts without having to press into another’s mind. It was all too easy to read Hux’s surface thoughts now, a litany of _stupidmistake_ and _shouldhavemadehimstay_ and _sorryKarlsosorry._ Kylo exhaled, slithering in as far as he dared and whispering into the current, trying to soothe away the guilt as unobtrusively as possible as Hux had done while treating his shoulder. His eyes were half-lidded as he watched Hux’s shoulders lose some of their tension, glimpsing, for a half-second, the soul of a lonely boy, and then a lonely man, a loneliness that Kylo, once Ben, had known intimately throughout his life, and an achingly familiar litany of _weakboyweakweakweak._

“I’ll have to replace this,” Kylo murmured, curling his exposed arm inward, still riding the current of Hux’s thoughts. He caught the way Hux’s eyes flared with that same earlier heat when the movement made the muscles in his upper arm flex, but Hux only hummed, eyes lingering for a few moments before he stood, a faint dusting of red to his cheeks.

“I need to make my report,” he said, and before Kylo could say anything else he was gone. Kylo himself lingered for a few more moments, his mind sluggish, as if drugged, but with a low laugh he at last stood, making his way to the cockpit, replacing his mask and cowl as he did so and ignoring the draft of artificial air that blew on the exposed skin of his arm and shoulder. Hux hadn’t needed to cut the whole thing off, they both knew it, but there was no point in commenting on the action. Soon, he would be dropping Hux off on some hitherto previously-unknown-to-Kylo planet, and then he would leave quickly and return to Nar Shaddaa and his crew, hopefully before Hux or his officers could think to stop him.

It was a functional plan, Kylo thought as he slipped back into the cockpit alone, watching the blue of their hyperspace route as they soared through space. In his line of work, functional would have to do.

 

\---

 

Lehon was a planet that must have been beautiful in its wild state. It still was beautiful, Kylo thought as he watched Hux stride down the gangplank to meet the contingent of men and women who had assembled as soon as Hux radioed them in. Lush and green, it was a far cry from Tatooine, with a sleek facility built into the cliffs and the ever-present sound of the sea as it lapped at the nearby beach, but there was something about it that whispered of secrets, of things long gone, and Kylo wondered, given the opportunity to explore, what he’d find buried under the planet’s seemingly peaceful exterior. He could feel the pull of the dark side, thick and seemingly out of place, and it made him wary.

Mask and cowl in place, one sleeve of his clothing still cut away, he watched as Hux greeted the uniformed humanoids stiffly, but he also saw the way the face of their leader, an ageing man with grey-streaked red hair flanked by a woman with azure skin and blazing red eyes, became abruptly considering when Hux said something that was too low for Kylo to hear, and he could feel the trickle of bitter pride that slithered from Hux’s mind. Caught up as Hux was, as the others were, and having not seen him, it was easier than he’d thought it would be obscure his presence from them as he slipped back into the bowls of the shuttle and into the pilot’s chair in the cockpit. For a moment he just sat there, hands at the controls, breath catching in his chest as he replayed Hux’s last words to him in his head, spoken before the gangplank had lowered in an oddly hesitant and hopeful tone, eyes green like the sea that had waited beyond the ship.

_“The First Order is always interested in acquiring men of your… unique skills. Something to keep in mind.”_

Kylo entertained it for a moment. It was everything his mother would have hated, and in the eyes of his father and Skywalker it would have justified every paranoid thought they’d ever had about him, and for that reason alone it was tempting, but then he thought of the _Myrmidon_ , of Madana and Bia and the life he had been building for himself independent of _legacy_ despite his father’s once-profession, and he exhaled. No. His family was too wrapped up in war—whatever was undoubtedly brewing in the galaxy, Kylo knew he wanted no part of it.

Moments later the engine was powering up and he was taking off, doing his best to ignore the flare of _hurt_ that had alighted in Hux’s mind as he dodged fire from the autoturrets below. He was a thief, Kylo told himself. A smuggler. This was what he did, and he couldn’t take the chance that Hux’s fellow officers would recognise and detain him where Hux had failed to do so. Even Hux wouldn’t stop them from locking him up if they realised who he was, what he could do, and he wasn’t daft enough to think Hux would choose him, a smuggler he had met less than twenty-hour hours ago, over the organisation he’d devoted his life to.

He told himself that for the next seven hours as he sat numbly in the cockpit, the coordinates set to return him to Nar Shaddaa, though after a moment he retrieved his datapad from where it was tucked into one of the satchels at his side, exhaling as it jostled the weapons clipped to his belt. He retrieved the coordinates of Lehon from the ship’s navicomputer and slipped the datapad, somewhat hesitantly, back into his pack. _Just in case_ , his mind whispered. It sounded suspiciously like his mother. _It never hurts to keep these things handy_.

He tried to ignore the part of him that hoped, for whatever reason, that he’d see Hux again, and his hand strayed to his shoulder before he could stop himself, skimming over where Hux’s fingers had touched his skin. In another world, perhaps he would have indulged those lazy thoughts of pressing his lips to the inside of Hux’s wrist. Were Hux not a who he was, _what_ he was, perhaps Kylo might have even extended an invitation to him to see the _Myrmidon_ , swiftly becoming Kylo’s pride and joy, and they could have had more time, but the Force wasn’t kind to him. All it did was take, chipping away at every chance Kylo had at happiness, more of a curse than the blessing Skywalker had always thought it to be.

No, Kylo thought, there was never to have been anything between him and Hux. He would put this behind him and he would move on, he would move _forward_ , and when he returned to Nar Shaddaa he would rejoin Madana and Bia on the _Myrmidon_ and leave them to chart their course to Corellia while he crashed in the room he’d claimed for himself. But maybe, maybe, he’d bring the _Myrmidon_ out here again. After all, Hux had said there were resources. Surely there’d be work for a smuggler willing to chart new hyperspace routes.

With that thought in mind he sighed, feeling exhaustion creep up on him. It was easy enough to set an alarm on his datapad and settle in the cramped pilot’s chair, letting his eyes slide shut without hesitation.

His last thoughts before sleep claimed him were of Hux’s green eyes, the eyes he’d never see again, glinting hot and heavy under the ship’s lights, and a longing for a future that never could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are curious, Kylo's armour and mask/cowl design is modelled off of [this](http://blog.andrewsnucins.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/7.jpg) stunning cosplay of Skyrim's Nightingale armour, sans cloak. Also, Kylo's [leggings](http://senatorbenamidala.tumblr.com/post/143809520205). Thank you to my friends for putting up with me as I lobbed fashion links at them and cried hysterically.
> 
> Baby's first ever posted kylux (and the perfectionist in me is rolling around anxiously) and the first fic on my shiny new AO3 account, so I'd love to know what you all think of it so far. Expect part two within the week. All my Star Wars fics are a series of "spot the KOTOR reference" games, I swear. I'm so sorry.
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> And finally, I hang out a lot on [tumblr](http://benamidalaas.tumblr.com/), where I agonise over characters both fictional and historical whilst avoiding changing my URL because updating my tags is agony. Feel free to come and say hi :D


	2. Ilum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunting for kyber crystals on Ilum in the Unknown Regions, Kylo runs into a familiar face.

As a child, Ben Organa-Solo had been told stories about this place.

 _“It was sacred to the Jedi,_ ” Skywalker had said, eyes warm as the students clustered around him to get a better view of the mini holoprojection in his hand. _“Before the Empire, initiates would be brought to Ilum to find the crystals to construct their first lightsabers, and when some of the Jedi went there to hide, the Imperials pursued them_.” Kylo remembered the way some of the younger students had gasped, their eyes flicking from the weapon that had rested innocently at Skywalker’s hip to the one that had rested at Ben’s, and at the time he had felt pride over the fact that he was the only one of Skywalker’s new Jedi to carry such a weapon—his grandfather’s, Skywalker had said, before Kylo had discovered what it really meant to carry Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber with him.

Kylo still had it. Hadn’t been able to leave it behind when he’d left, though he’d debated it, and they hadn’t tried to stop him, hadn’t shouted after him. No, they’d merely watched him walk off into the desert, confident that he would return. Kylo was sure they’d been confident even as he’d been on the nearest freighter off Tatooine.

He didn’t know how long it had taken them all to realise he wasn’t coming back, and in those early days he’d wondered if Skywalker had been saddened by the realisation, and then he told himself not to be ridiculous. Before Skywalker had driven off the voice, the one that had whispered in his head for so long and left an ugly monster in his chest, it had told him that Skywalker only took him in out of obligation to his sister, that Skywalker would have been happy to be rid of him, if given the opportunity, just like his parents. Those were the thoughts that had haunted Kylo during his early weeks on the _Myrmidon_ , back when the ship hadn’t yet been his and he’d whispered _Kylo_ over and over to a blank wall an attempt to chase Ben away; to ensure the name never accidentally passed his lips again.

Standing deep within the old Jedi Temple on the icy surface of Ilum, the fur of his hood ticking his face as the cold settled into his bones, he wondered if Skywalker had ever set foot on this planet himself, but ultimately that didn’t matter. He had a kyber crystal in one hand and his grandfather’s lightsaber clutched tightly in the other, an innocuous little thing, the legacy he had once craved until he’d realised what it meant. Once upon a time on a lush planet Han Solo and Leia Organa had looked at their son with fear curling in their minds and it wasn’t until two decades later that he’d realised what that fear meant.

Now, instead of the gift he’d once thought it to be, he couldn’t help but wonder if giving him Darth Vader’s old lightsaber had been Skywalker’s way of telling Ben that he’d sensed the darkness, too, and had simply been better at concealing his fear than Solo.

Didn’t matter now, though, did it? Ben was gone. Kylo, a nobody, had taken his place, and soon the companion to the short yellow ‘saber that hung at Kylo’s hip wouldn’t be the old blue blade but a different one all together. His own.

Well, if he could get out of the caves without detection, anyway.

Skywalker had been telling the truth about the Imperials having discovered the planet and it seemed that, even decades later, they had insisted on maintaining their hold. In the old holorecords he and his crew had swiped from the archives on Coruscant there had been mention of using the Force to open up the ancient Jedi Temple, but when they’d arrived it had been to see a giant metal door and the structural remains of a garrison blocking his path, and it had taken hours of him working two lightsabers through the doors before he’d been able to slip in, leaving Madana and Bia to keep watch.

Madana hadn’t liked that at all, his silvery-purple eyes flashing with vitriol, but he had eventually agreed. He wasn’t Force-sensitive, not in the way Kylo was; this place wasn’t for him. Bia hadn’t wanted anything to do with it, either.

Neither of them had counted on an Imperial remnant actually showing up, of having maintained a small mining presence in the temple, and Kylo cursed himself for his oversight now, for assuming this old place had been forgotten once again. Madana’s voice had been calm over the comm when he’d hailed Kylo, the signal crackling, breaking the flush of victory that Kylo had been savouring over recovering a crystal from the great caves, and Kylo had directed them to conceal themselves and wait as he slowly made his way back to the entrance, pointedly ignoring the frozen corpse of an old Clone Wars-era trooper as he did so.

It wasn’t until he heard voices that he stopped, tucking the crystal and his grandfather’s lightsaber securely into the small satchel that held his datapad, holding his breath and _waiting_.

“Sir.” The voice was distorted, but high, almost feminine. “Our scanners are picking up no signs of life. My troops have not yet returned from their reconnaissance. Few of our scanners work in those tunnels.”

“They will keep looking,” a second voice said, and Kylo almost slipped on the ice. He knew that voice. “You saw the same thing I did, Phasma—someone is here. I don’t know how they managed to cut through forty centimetres of reinforced durasteel, or why they would come to a wasteland like this, but they obviously came prepared.” A pause. “I’ll not let anyone stand in the way of this. For any reason. I don’t know how anyone found out about this place, but they will not leave here alive.”

Kylo exhaled slowly, doing his best to calm his nerves as he reassessed his situation, absurdly grateful that the First Order—for it could be nothing else, not if Hux was here, his voice clipped and familiar in a way that brought a rush of memories back—hadn’t found Madana or Bia, wherever they’d hidden. In the year that had passed since he’d last seen Hux, he’d done his best to research the First Order, and he still remembered the way his mother’s face had cracked when she’d come up on the message feed. He’d said, haltingly, upon hearing through the rumour mill that the Senate had cast her out, branding her a warmonger, that war had always suited her anyway, and she had reached out as if to touch his bared face, her relief at him being alive after years of no contact so strong that Kylo had always choked on it from systems away.

“Ben—“ she had said, but upon hearing that name Kylo had interrupted, sentiment evaporating, asking her what she knew of the First Order, and when he’d gotten what he’d wanted he’d disconnected the call and slumped back into the pilot’s chair of the _Myrmidon_ , trying to calm the tremors that had wracked his body. Madana had found him like that, drawn in by the negative energy, and he had stood by Kylo’s side, doing his best to project a sense of calm until Kylo had drawn in a shuddering breath and given him a small nod.

He knew, from his mother’s reports, that the First Order was more dangerous than he had initially given it credit for. They were highly organised, highly fanatical, and seemed to be drawing funding from something even Leia Organa couldn’t yet figure it out. Ostensibly, Kylo had brought the _Myrmidon_ and her crew out here to scout new smuggling routes—crime thrived everywhere, but a market untapped by the Hutts and the Republic had been intriguing, even as Kylo had tried to convince himself that his returning to the Unknown Regions had little to do with a red-haired Major—but deep within he had known that it was his desire to know more about this First Order that had driven them so far from the known systems.

Madana hadn’t complained, had simply cocked his head to the side and pursed his lips but given his agreement, and Bia, well. She did what she was told, despite how she tried to hide it, a remnant of the life she had lived before Kylo and Madana had freed her from an early end at the hands of her Hutt master.

Finding such a large Imperial network in the Unknown Regions had been a surprise, and Kylo had never been more grateful for the mask and the fact that _Kylo_ was not yet a name so well known that everyone in the criminal underworld wanted to tear him to shreds. There were empires at play out here that the Republic would shit their collective robes to know about, and Kylo thought those empires must have been so much _more_ , once, before the Hand sent out by Thrawn had joined with what Kylo now knew to have been the Chiss Ascendency. It was, Kylo guessed grimly, the source of the First Order’s funding and high-tech gear. He didn’t know for sure, and he didn’t know what he was going to do with the information yet, but. He had it. Whether he wanted to make a target out of himself by sharing it with anyone was a whole other story.

“Colonel.” Another filtered voice, and the sound of multiple footsteps running on ice. Colonel. Hux must have gotten promoted. Kylo sucked in a breath and forced himself to keep moving, the ice slippery under his palm as he crept through one of the caverns. He couldn’t see anyone yet, but he had to be careful. The old holorecords had spoken of one tunnel beyond the original temple door, one that had then branched out, but it seemed the First Order had been busy, for there were many little tunnels leading from the main room now, channelling deep into the ice for easier access to the kyber crystals that lay deep within. Kylo wondered, dimly, why it was no one had been present when he and his crew had landed, but for the moment it didn’t matter.

“Sir, FN-2003 ran into some trouble within one of the caverns. 2187 stayed behind to help him.”

Kylo tuned out Hux’s sharp reply and the cool, higher voice that echoed it, turning his head down the direction he had come from, gloved hands clenching. There was something there, a call, and something deep within Kylo told him to answer it, even as his logical mind told him _no_ , to stay, to wait, to _listen_ , because Hux was _right here_ and he—

 _If he finds you here he will turn you in,_ Kylo’s mind hissed. _You know he will. You are nothing to him, merely a convenience from a standard year ago_. _Go. Hide._ He breathed out then, turning away from Hux and the main chamber, creeping back through the tunnel he had initially taken, uncaring of where he went so long as it was away.

He didn’t expect the Force to lead him to two stormtroopers deep within the caverns, one breathing laboriously—unconscious, Kylo gleaned, skirting over the man’s mind—while the other reached up to press something on their helmet.

“Captain,” the trooper said, and Kylo’s eyes snapped to him. There was something different about this one, something that felt as old as this temple, and Kylo exhaled as he recognised the Force within this masked soldier. “Captain, Sl—2003 is down. Requesting backup.” There was only silence to the trooper’s call, however, and Kylo hummed low, a deep rumble in his chest, knowing the trooper wouldn’t hear it.

The fallen trooper wasn’t mortally injured, Kylo noted idly, but the remaining trooper’s worry was obvious. It struck something deep within Kylo, and he breathed in his own curiosity—a weapon caring for another weapon. Compassion. The Force seemed to swirl around them, and Kylo let himself get caught in it until a sharp, “Who’s there?” brought him back into his body and he looked up to find the trooper’s blaster pointed in his direction. It didn’t matter that the trooper couldn’t see him, or whether or not the trooper was aware that it was the Force that allowed him to perceive Kylo where others could not.

He was caught, and he cursed the Force for it, remaining silent until the trooper asked him to show himself, sounding a lot more impatient this time, but Kylo could read the worry in his mind all too easily.

“Your friend is fine,” Kylo said lowly. He didn’t move from his spot. “FN-2187,” he guessed. “Your squad is displeased with you.”

“Come out. I won’t ask again,” 2187 said. The helmet made his voice hard to read, but that was all right. He was broadcasting, and Kylo had no trouble vetting the steel intent behind the trooper’s words.

He could kill these two, he knew. He could kill them and he could return to the main cavern and he could kill everyone else. A small squadron was nothing against a Jedi, and Kylo, he was no Jedi—he didn’t have their moral code or their respect for all life—because he was _more_ , unconstrained by a Jedi’s weakness. It would be nothing at all to strike them down and something terrible in his chest whispered that he should do it, that they were weak and he was strong, but he shuddered when he realised what that voice sounded like, breathing deeply and trying to clear his mind, following the echoes of the Force as they centred around 2187.

How strange it was, to find a Force adept way out here—but then again, he supposed, just because the Jedi were largely gone, destroyed by their own foolishness in an era now dead, didn’t mean Force-sensitives could no longer exist, or that they couldn’t exist out here, far beyond Republic space. The Jedi were not supposed to be representatives of the Republic, no matter how many times they had fallen into that role in the past. The Force was independent of government systems. It did not adhere to boundaries. The Jedi had been foolish to forget that. Still, Force-sensitive though this trooper may have been, he was untrained, and likely unaware. Kylo breathed out. He couldn’t decide if this man was lucky to not truly know the Force, or unfortunate. Kylo envied him the naïvety either way.

“If you promise not to shoot me,” Kylo murmured, “I will comply.”

“I make no promises.”

“I could just kill you both right now, then, if you prefer. I hadn’t planned for bloodshed, but I’m flexible.”

The trooper didn’t like that answer. Kylo heard rather than saw the way his fingers tightened on his blaster. But eventually something gave and when Kylo peered through the ice he saw that the trooper had lowered his weapon. Kylo, already regretting his decision to flee from the main chamber, slid out from his hiding spot.

“You’re the one they’re looking for,” the trooper said bluntly. Kylo cocked his head to the side.

“Yes.”

“I’m to bring you to my captain.”

“You’re hardly in a place to negotiate,” Kylo reminded him, sliding over to kneel down by the fallen trooper, noticing for the first time the large chunks of ice that had been scattered all over the floor of the cavern and the crack in an otherwise smooth helmet. He reached forward, but the 2187 stiffened, and Kylo slowly lifted his other hand.

“If I wanted to kill you both, I would have,” he reminded him flatly, and to his vague delight the trooper seemed to accept this answer. Kylo huffed, turning his attention back to the fallen trooper, listening to the whispers in the Force that spoke of life as he pressed one hand to white armour. “Your friend is fine. He was out cold, but now he’s just sleeping. And don’t tell me the First Order doesn’t have friends. I’ve run into your type before.”

“You know who we are.”

Kylo just grunted, and when he rose to his feet the trooper’s helmeted gaze followed him. Kylo didn’t offer him a hand, and eventually the trooper stood on his own, tugging at his friend’s arm. _Should have killed him_ , the darkness in Kylo’s chest whispered again. _Should have killed him. He’ll tell. He’ll tell Hux_. But he pushed the darkness aside and, after a moment, stooped down to help as well, exhaling, and together, silently, they made their way to the entrance of the cavern, dragging the limp body of FN-2003 behind them as they made their way to the entrance. Kylo wasn’t even surprised when two more troopers met them halfway their, guns trained immediately on Kylo’s dark form, and he didn’t resist when they came behind him and pushed him forward into the brightness of the main cavern where a tall chromed trooper stood waiting next to the imposing figure of one Colonel Hux.

Unlike his troops, Hux wore no armour, only a dark coat that fell nearly to the floor, the sleeves bearing his new rank for all to see. Hux’s disdain and anger was surprisingly raw, and Kylo laughed as he breathed it in, letting his eyes flutter shut as the troopers pushed him to his knees. He could kill them all, he told himself. He was not as helpless as they thought.

“Sir, this is the intruder,” one of the troopers—not 2187, Kylo noted, who was watching the proceedings with, _oh_ , was that _guilt_?—said, pressing their gun to the back of Kylo’s head.

“Search him,” the chromed trooper said, and Kylo grunted as the others immediately began to paw at the pale grey coat he’d been wearing, feeling a spark of anxiety and fear unfurl in his gut at the thought of the troopers finding his ‘sabers. He was quick to reach out with the Force, to push into their minds, and he barely managed to conceal a relieved sigh when all they pulled out was his blaster, the sound of it clattering to the icy floor of the temple echoing in the air.

“I’ll make this quick,” Hux said then, his boots connecting sharply with the ground as he marched to stand in front of Kylo. Kylo kept his head down, breathing into the dark scarf that kept the cold from freezing the lower half of his face. “I want to know how you knew about this place, and why you are here.”

Kylo laughed lowly. Hux stiffened. “Believe me,” he said, lowering his voice, “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

He wasn’t prepared for the rough hands that suddenly seized his jaw, but he allowed it to happen, keeping his body still as Hux wrenched his chin up, exposing his eyes and the tips of the three scars. For a moment there was only silence as Hux stared at him, and Kylo almost took pleasure in the way Hux’s eyes— _blue_ , Kylo thought, _blue like the ice, how strange, thought they were green_ —flared. He wondered, distantly, where his crew was.

“Phasma,” Hux said. His voice was steady, and Kylo felt vaguely impressed. He continued to hold Hux’s gaze until Hux released his jaw and straightened, turning to the gathered troopers. “Leave us. I will deal with this.”

“Sir—“

“That’s an order, Captain,” Hux barked, and this time the chromed trooper merely inclined her head, turning to order her troops out. Kylo didn’t miss the way the one from the cavern looked at him as he marched by, but he had little time to ponder it, for as soon as they were gone—crawling out the hole Kylo had made earlier—Hux whirled around, his hands grabbing roughly at the front of Kylo’s coat, and Kylo did nothing but grunt as Hux’s gloved hands tore the hood from his face, catching his hair. He felt the coolness of leather against his skin as Hux’s hands skimmed down his temples, and then Hux was tugging the scarf from his face and Kylo swallowed back the old anxiety by telling himself that this was nothing Hux hadn’t seen before.

“You,” he breathed as soon as Kylo’s face was revealed, his thumbs pressing against the scar that split Kylo’s bottom lip. “What the _hell_ are you doing here?” But the harshness of his words was belayed by the way his hands abruptly softened, tracing the scars, disbelieving, and Kylo didn’t know what to do with this. He’d dreamed about it, imagined what it would feel like were Hux to touch his face again, the way no one ever had, but he had not expected it to be here, on a forgotten planet on the fringes of space, the ice cold under his knees and the—

“Hux,” he said, and was surprised when he felt Hux’s hands shake and then withdraw.

“You shouldn’t be here. This mine is property of the First Order. I have orders to kill anyone who stumbles upon it. We’ve never had any problems until you. Why was your purpose?”

Kylo breathed in and out for a few moments to steady himself. “The crystals,” he said, evading the question. “You’re mining the crystals.”

“What do you know of them?” Hux demanded, his words heated, but he didn’t protest when Kylo pushed himself to his feet.

“I know they’ll fetch a hefty price,” Kylo said, voice like gravel. “If the First Order is keen on extracting them, I assume you know their weaponised benefits, as the Empire did. Must you ask?”

Hux’s hands clenched. “You should not be here,” he repeated. “I have orders.”

“So you’ll shoot me, Hux, is that it?” Kylo queried, forcing the edge out of his voice as best he could. He suspected the efforts were in vain. He didn’t want this to end in bloodshed, didn’t want to raise a weapon against Hux, but he would. He would if he had to. “Hux. You don’t have to do this. You know I can keep a secret. I told no one about Lehon—“

Hux moved fast, and within a few seconds Kylo found himself slammed against one of the pillars that dotted the cavern, his head connecting sharply with the dark stone. The Force swirled around him and as he breathed in he knew, he _knew_ it would be simple, so simple to push Hux back, to strangle him and run, but with a gasp he swallowed that urge, ignoring the way something hot lurched in his gut as Hux’s elbow came up to push against his throat.

“All I know,” Hux hissed, “is that the moment I turned my back you _stole_ First Order property and almost cost me my promotion. The Commandant—“ _fatherfatherfather_ , Hux’s mind screamed “—was displeased, to say the least.”

Kylo said nothing, focusing on breathing, but when he dared to push his mind out, to feel Hux’s ( _familiar_ , Kylo’s own mind registered, _sharp_ ), he was surprised to find that kernel of _hurt_ still buried there, beneath everything else, and he couldn’t help but laugh, though with Hux nearly cutting off his air supply it came out as more of a wheeze.

“Upset because I didn’t say goodbye?” he said, sucking in a breath when Hux stepped back as though burned, beginning to pace. Kylo rubbed his throat, then huffed. “Hux. Had I stepped off that gangplank, your little soldier friends would have arrested and executed me for knowing the location of your base. You know this.” _They would have known. They would have seen what you have yet to_. Kylo knew this, too. Hux, however, narrowed his eyes, his hands clenching at his side, body tense with repressed energy.

“ _I_ had to pay for letting you escape, for the fact that you could have told everyone where we were and—“ Hux breathed in sharply. “They promoted me, you know, and were confused when I asked to come here, to this wasteland. In the days of the Empire this was considered a punishment. They laughed.” Hux’s eyes took on a slight sheen, and his voice softened to a threatening lilt. “They’ll regret that. There are eyes on us, on my work, that you wouldn’t believe. The people who matter know my worth. They know what I plan to be capable of, and you, you’re _nothing_.”

Hux’s voice lost its conviction on that last word, but it struck a painful chord in Kylo’s chest, despite the fact that Kylo could recognise a mantra when he heard it. Instead of responding he collected his thoughts and then reached out, carefully, his fingers grazing Hux’s clothed hands as the man stopped in front of him. _Small_ , he remembered. _Delicate_. _What is he planning to make them capable of?_

“A weapon,” Kylo breathed. He didn’t know what type—surely they would not try to recreate the Death Star, not when that had failed twice, so perhaps there was something else, a schematic the First Order had recovered from the archives of the Empire—but it didn’t matter. Hux’s eyes snapped to his face, and his hand trembled for the blaster Kylo knew now to be hidden under his cloak. “You need the crystals for weapons, is that it? Are you building another Death Star? Reinforcing your ships? Oh, Hux, have some originality. You know the Republic would be on you the second you stepped into known space.”

“Shut up, Kylo,” Hux hissed, and then he was in Kylo’s space again, a hand pressed to his mouth. “I don’t like being in someone’s debt, and it is only because I regrettably owe you on multiple counts that I am not blowing your brains out across the ice right now.”

 _Were you anyone else,_ Kylo heard, with suddenly clarity _, I still would have_. The thought made his eyes widen, and suddenly he _wanted_ , more than he had ever wanted before, wanted this strange man with his delicate bones and his anger. When he’d been a teenager Ben had stolen away to Mos Eisley once and spent the evening sequestered in the corner of a cantina, watching with rapt eyes as people of all shapes and sizes mingled, and his attention had caught on one in particular, a man with curly brown hair and an easy smile that had made Ben’s heart flutter in his chest. When he’d returned to Skywalker not even the disappointed, worried expression his uncle had given him had been enough to make Ben forget that, and he’d spent several nights furtively jerking off under the covers of his bed, stifling small moans into his pillow.

When he’d left Tatooine he’d fallen into bed with Madana, once, after the _Myrmidon_ had fallen to him and he’d been floundering under the responsibility of watching a ship and severely reduced crew, but since then his bed partners had been few and far in between and he’d never _craved_ , not like this, so when Hux removed his hand Kylo felt his tongue flick out, connecting with the leather of Hux’s glove, and he _revelled_ in the way Hux gasped. When the anger in Hux’s eyes turned to a different heat all Kylo could think was, _got you_.

“Hux,” he breathed when the hand on his mouth loosened minutely, something in Hux’s face wavering in the face of whatever he saw in Kylo’s eyes. _Alonealone_ , Hux’s mind whispered, thoughts racing, and Kylo saw in him the same desire he saw in himself: to be strong, to be respected for a legacy built from the ground, to never be at anyone else’s mercy ever again, and to have someone who understood that urge, who would stand by him. Hux was alone, like Kylo was alone, but beyond that there was something else in Hux that Kylo lacked: an ever-present, all-consuming need for control over others that he’d missed that time fleeing Nar Shaddaa, even though it’d been written in the way Hux had handled him, the way he’d commanded him, the way he’d touched Kylo’s face like… like there was something worth claiming. Owning. Kylo was a leader, he ordered his crew, he kept them alive, but he was a leader only insofar that he was the most adept at protecting his crew, and his unspoken command hadn’t stopped him from locking himself in his quarters some nights while Madana and Bia were planetside, taking himself in hand to fantasies of being able to give up that control, of being taken care of, so when Hux’s breathing shifted, a low heat burning in his eyes, Kylo lowered his lashes, let his tongue dart out against the supple leather of Hux’s gloves, and surrendered to him.

“Please,” he whispered into the emptiness of the cavern, sighing deeply when he saw something in Hux’s eyes give, not fighting when Hux’s hand was whisked away to be replaced by a demanding mouth and an insistent tongue.

“You,” Hux snarled, hands tearing at the front of Kylo’s jacket, “couldn’t stop thinking about you. I would have protected you, stars know why. I would have told the Commandant no. Wouldn’t have let them have you.”

“Hux,” Kylo whispered, because _yes you would have_ would have broken the spell, because _they would have known Ben where they didn’t know Kylo_ could not be spoken, because _for a moment I considered joining you_ gave away too much of whatever this thing between them was, and stars, it shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Kylo knew that. A murder on the Smuggler’s Moon, reverent touches in a silent room, those hours spent on Hux’s ship wondering with that strange thing hovering between them, none of these things should have happened, none of them should have mattered, and yet they had, they did, and Kylo couldn’t help the faint whimper that left him when he felt one of Hux’s hands slide into his coat, working past layers to press against the bare skin underneath, though he had the presence of mind to grasp Hux’s hands when they threatened to trail to his hip, where the yellow ‘saber remained clipped to his belt.

“Hux, I—“ he started, but broke off with another whimper as Hux’s teeth latched onto his bottom lip and sucked and _pulled_ , Hux taking the time to pin Kylo’s hands above his head as he did so.

“Obscene,” Hux said as Kylo blinked at him, mouth falling open in question, shuddering when Hux pressed his free hand against Kylo’s lower lip. “Wanted this on the ship, ever since I saw your face. Never thought I’d have the chance when you left.”

He was touching the scar again, Kylo noted dimly, and the old urge to hide his face away presented itself, because like that time on the ship—the ship he had stolen and sold after scrapping bits of it to upgrade the _Myrmidon_ —he was showing Hux too much, too soon.

“Sometimes,” Hux said idly, tracing the scars again, and Kylo distantly registered the growing tightness in his pants, “I’d wonder if you died. Entertained the idea of sending men out after you, to bring you to me, and dismissed it each time. A waste of resources. That’s what you would have been. That is what you _are_. You’re in my head, and I cannot get you out when my attention would be better focused elsewhere.”

Kylo could not stop the laughter, his mind abuzz, but then Hux was pulling back and Kylo’s eyes were widening as he felt hands fumble at the wraps that lay under his coat, trying to get to his pants.

“Hux,” Kylo tried. “We’re in an ice temple. We can’t—“

“Shut up,” Hux said, falling to his knees. “I don’t want to hear you speak.” Kylo used the opportunity to shift, to push his yellow ‘saber around to the small of his back where Hux could not see it. “Besides,” Hux continued, “you won’t be cold for long.”

“What—“ but the question was lost when Hux pulled off his gloves and managed to tug his pants down his hips enough to get at his cock, which he promptly swallowed down without another word, causing Kylo to throw his head back with a throaty moan, hurriedly stripping his own gloves off so that he could knock Hux’s hat aside and bury his fingers in Hux’s gelled hair. “Stars,” he gasped, mouth falling open, “Hux, _yes_ —“

Hux smirked around his cock, emitting a throaty chuckle that made Kylo’s legs quiver—had it really been that long?—as he scrambled for purchase against the stone, one leg moving of its own accord to wrap around Hux’s back, drawing him closer as he tried to fuck into that wet heat, mewling when Hux drew back with a warning drag of his teeth. He wondered if the chromed captain or any of the stormtroopers would come looking for Hux if they remained here too long, but the thought was snuffed out as Hux’s lips teased the tip of his cock, his tongue pushing at the slit before he swallowed him again, warm where everything else was pervasive and cold.

He moaned, the sound reverberating from deep within his chest as Hux hollowed his cheeks. _Obscene_ , Hux had said, and he thought he understood what that meant now, watching Hux’s mouth move up and down his cock, his hair a mess from Kylo’s fingers. Kylo could feel the lightsaber digging into his back, but he couldn’t bring himself to move, losing himself to the sensations, and Kylo didn’t know why he wanted this, didn’t know why he needed it, needed _Hux_ , only knew that he did and—

His release caught him by surprise and, by the way Hux gagged and drew back abruptly, coughing, he wasn’t the only one. Kylo, boneless, slid down the pillar until he was seated on the ground, grateful for the way the length of his coat prevented his bare bottom from touching the ice, one leg still wrapped around Hux’s back.

“Mm,” Hux said consideringly before he dribbled the residual come in his mouth onto his palm, an action that made Kylo’s head spin. Kylo distantly registered that it was cold, and was momentarily grateful for the fact that the temple hid them from Ilum’s fierce storms before Hux was standing, tugging him back up. “Turn around for me, Kylo,” he hissed against Kylo’s ear and Kylo, dazed, obeyed without question, pretending not to notice the way Hux’s mind flared with satisfaction as he did so before he abruptly started as one of Hux’s hands slid between his thighs, rubbing the come there, before moving up over his ass.

“No lube,” Kylo tried to say, but he broke off with a small moan as Hux nosed against his neck and pulled the scarf off completely, throwing it to the ground.

“I want to mark you,” Hux whispered fiercely, rubbing between his cheeks. “I want to take my time with this, to pull you apart. If we had more time…”

And that, Kylo thought, drifting, was the thing, wasn’t it? If they had more time. Were they anyone else. But they didn’t, and they weren’t. They were a smuggler and a military man alone with the bones of the past and the buried secrets of a dead age encased in ice, and so Hux didn’t try to breach him, as Kylo feared he might have otherwise. Instead, Kylo heard Hux curse and the sound of fabric being pushed aside, of a belt being undone.

“Spread your legs,” Hux hissed against his ear, biting at one of Kylo’s lobes, one hand smoothing over Kylo’s ass. When Kylo obeyed that, too, he felt Hux’s lust grow, and when Hux whispered a low _good_ against his skin and rubbed his hands at the wet mess between Kylo’s legs Kylo’s spent cock gave a minute twitch.

“What are you—“ he began, slurred, but Hux interrupted him with a quick _ssh_. Kylo distantly registered Hux smearing more of Kylo’s own come between his thighs, and then something hard was slipped between his spread legs. Kylo’s breath caught when he realised what it was, and he whimpered when Hux commanded him to close his legs again, something he did with sluggish movements, barely able to do more than brace himself face-first against the crumbling, etched column as Hux began to fuck the area between his thighs.

“Oh,” Kylo said, and Hux laughed, low and throaty, his fingers holding tight Kylo’s hips as he began to build up a rhythm that made Kylo breathe deepy. Slowly, he buried his face in the crook of his own elbow, and was surprised when Hux reached up to grab his chin.

“Look at me, Kylo,” he demanded, and Kylo could do nothing but acquiesce, his eyes holding Hux’s firmly as Hux began to thrust harder, quicker, until he was spilling between Kylo’s thighs with a stifled moan, those brilliant eyes sliding shut, helpless against the throes of pleasure.

“Fuck,” Hux muttered after a few moments, pressing his head against Kylo’s lowered fur hood. Kylo could only hum, body still feeling weak, conscious of the way Hux’s come dripped uncomfortably down his thighs and into his clothes, rapidly cooling in the air of the cavern, even with his skin still heated as it was.

“Hux,” he murmured, pushing away from the column, only to freeze at the look on Hux’s face—want, need, pure and simple. Kylo resisted the urge to tremble, an old shame creeping up in him. Before he could give into it he stepped forward, tucking Hux back into his pants with an almost hesitant gentleness, pretending not to feel the way Hux watched him. Reality was beginning to set in, and with it a curl of anxiety. He pulled up his own pants, suddenly uncaring of the mess. They had fucked in a cave the Jedi had once held to be sacred. Kylo wondered if any of those spirits were looking at him with disgust: Anakin Skywalker’s bloodline defiling sacred Jedi traditions once again.

Then he remembered he was no Jedi, that the Jedi were weak, fractured and broken by old traditions, and he told himself it didn’t matter. Perhaps this would have finally provoked Skywalker into the anger he had always been determined not to show, had he known, and the thought was enough to sober Kylo. He looked away from Hux and the strange, possessive softness in his eyes, the one that made them look green instead of that icy blue.

“Are you going to turn me in,” Kylo said lowly, “now that you’ve gotten what you wanted?”

The words made Hux stiffen, the softness snuffed out abruptly, and Kylo instantly regretted them when Hux’s mind closed off, losing the warmth that had been contentedly hazing his otherwise sharp thoughts. Kylo watched warily as Hux picked up his discarded gloves and hat, putting them on with military precision.

“You escaped,” Hux intoned. “You had backup. You knocked me out and left me here, and in my embarrassment I ensured that your presence was never recorded in the official databanks. No one has to know we gave into this weakness. Consider us even, Kylo.” Then he spun on his heels and turned, marching towards the hole Kylo had cut in the durasteel door.

“Hux!” Kylo called before he could stop himself, and he ached at the way Hux’s shoulders tensed, at the sudden burst of _nodon’t_ , _weakweakweak,_ that he could hear in Hux’s mind. Kylo licked his chapped lips before he crept forward, reaching out to curl one hand around Hux’s clothed wrist. He didn’t know what he wanted to say, only that he needed to make this better, so that they could part on good terms; so that, selfishly, he could look back on this memory with fondness instead of bitter regret. Slowly, carefully, he slid Hux’s hat off, exhaling when Hux didn’t stop him.

“You need a bigger coat,” Kylo whispered into Hux’s soft hair, wincing at the awkward flatness of his voice. He pressed on. “You’re so small. I thought about that a lot on the ship, and after. How small you are. I looked at you in that club and thought you were weak. The Weequay captain thought you were weak, but then you pulled that trigger without hesitation. Not a weakling at all. _Strong._ ” A pause. Hux was trembling and so Kylo said, quietly, “you could come with me. When I leave.”

Hux turned abruptly and Kylo braced himself for a blow, but Hux kissed him instead, deep and needy and possessive, tongue running across the scars on Kylo’s upper and lower lips. When Hux pulled back and reached up to stroke his face again Kylo didn’t need to hear the answer to know what it was.

“No.” It was said softly, the way Kylo had said it with his actions when he’d stolen that ship and fled Lehon, leaving Hux and his First Order behind. _No_. No to this nameless thing they both felt but could not have. _This is goodbye_ , Kylo realised. The Force wouldn’t be so kind as to bring them together a third time, and so he dragged Hux into another kiss, greedy and rough.

This time, when Hux turned to leave, Kylo didn’t stop him, and he didn’t move for a long time, standing awkwardly in the middle of that cavern with the ghosts of Jedi long dead tittering and laughing at him. Slowly, almost mechanically, he reached into his bag and pulled out his grandfather’s lightsaber, his fingers clenching on the familiar hilt. He couldn’t leave it here now, but suddenly that didn’t seem to matter as much. Kylo had the new kyber crystal, and on the _Myrmidon_ were the other parts he needed. He would take Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber back with him and he would bury it deep in the little chest of artefacts he kept in his room and maybe one day he would return to Skywalker and give it back to him, or perhaps he would give it to Rey, who had marvelled at it all the times Ben had allowed her to see it.

“Boss?” a light voice queried, and Kylo looked up to see Madana standing by Kylo’s makeshift entrance, a look of knowing on his face. “They’re gone. Bia is back at the ship. We’re merely awaiting your return.”

Kylo breathed in, his chest suddenly, painfully tight, hatred for the Force bleeding from every orifice as if he could chase it away with the strength of his emotions. It took everything, absolutely everything, no matter how many times Kylo had sworn he wouldn’t become its slave, like the Jedi. He felt hesitant fingers at his shoulder, and breathed in as he felt Madana project a series of calming emotions at him—not happy ones, never happy ones, for Madana knew Kylo wouldn’t appreciate that, that Kylo only tolerated this subtle manipulation to an extent.

When Ben Organa-Solo had fled his family he had done so with the clothes on his back and as many credits as he could carry after selling the speeder he’d stolen from Skywalker to get there. He knew, now, that his venture could have ended differently. Knew how the lie of his new name had tumbled unconvincingly from his tongue, and how the then-captain of the _Myrmidon_ , a man who had lived but two weeks after Kylo had begged passage aboard his vessel, had been moments from tossing him out until Madana had sidled up to him, whispering lowly, convincing him that the man (boy) who had once been Ben meant them no harm.

Kylo had felt the projected emotions and reeled back, suddenly afraid of this beautiful man with his pale blue hair and bright pink skin, but in the end, it was Madana who had helped set the course of his new life, Madana who had accepted his new name, Madana who had remained after a battle with a rival smuggling group had left the _Myrmidon_ crippled without her captain. Madana had calmed Kylo then, too, projecting soothing emotions at Kylo’s blinding rage until Kylo’s breathing had regulated and he had been able to deactivate his grandfather’s lightsaber, clutched tightly in his hand, the bodies of the rival crew dead in a circle around him. When Kylo had become captain of the _Myrmidon_ , Madana had supported that, too. It was why Madana was the only one he trusted to support him now.

“Come on,” Madana murmured then, and Kylo nodded curtly, numbly, retrieving his scarf and wrapping it around his face before he zipped his coat back up and pulled his hood over his hair. He wasn’t foolish enough to think Madana didn’t know what had happened, but his second was gracious enough not to mention it, and Kylo wondered, for the umpteenth time, what had happened to make Madana as he was, so different from any other Zeltron Kylo had ever met, but in the end it didn’t matter. They all had secrets. It wasn’t his job to pry when they left him and his well enough alone.

The winds of Ilum bit through his gear when he slipped out of the temple, but Kylo didn’t shiver. Instead, as he and Madana walked back to where they’d hidden the _Myrmidon_ , he thought about his mother, and how much it would validate her to know what was happening out here; how her eyes would shine with that passionate edge it always got when she was involved in a cause. But then he thought of Hux, of the way he had looked at Kylo with that strange fondness, of how Hux had trusted him to walk away and say _nothing_ instead of killing him, and he swallowed that urge. Leia Organa didn’t need her son for anything. She and Solo had made that all too clear when they’d thrown Ben away on Tatooine, too wrapped up in their own wars and their own desires to bother with their son’s.

He wouldn’t tell anyone. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing to tell. Hux and his First Order would do as they would, and Kylo would stay out of their way, as he stayed out of Organa’s reach and Solo’s thoughts—Hux’s too, eventually. Hux would forget him now that he’d satisfied his curiosity and he would return to his remnant and Kylo would do as he had been doing since he left Skywalker and his students: he would make his own path, and he would not interfere in this conflict of ideologies. War would not be his legacy.

But for some reason, the thought was not as comforting as it used to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more part to go. Sorry for the wait! I spend way too much time on the Star Wars wiki.
> 
> Please let me know what you think (I thrive on feedback, especially when I'm new to something) and come cry about kylux with me on [tumblr](http://benamidalaas.tumblr.com/) c:


	3. Takodana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo should have known the past would catch up to him in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, _god_ , I am so very sorry for how long this chapter took to get out. I had every intention of finishing it way earlier than this, but then university started up again and it was the very last year of my BA so between all my assignments and applying for grad school I was _swamped_ , and my mental health was just complete shit. I did get accepted to grad school at least, but that ended up requiring me to move to a whole new continent, and then I fell really ill, and honestly, guys, this past year has just been such a blur I don't know what to tell you.
> 
> Still, I am sorry. And I hope the length of this chapter (bordering on 18k, yikes) is enough to make up for it. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest. Sort of mixed, I guess, because I like half of it and hate the other half, but I couldn't bring myself to split the chapter. This fic was planned and written with three parts in mind, and so three parts it shall be. I hope it lives up to the expectations of those who have been waiting patiently all this time <3

For all that it was a safe haven to those willing to obey the rules, Kylo and his crew rarely travelled to Takodana. Indeed, in the years since leaving Skywalker’s academy Kylo had only been there once, and it had been to beg a favour from someone he’d never before met. Maz Kanata had obliged, but Kylo hadn’t liked standing long in her presence. She had taken one look at him, her eyes focusing like she could see _everything_ , and Kylo still remembered the way she’d pursed her mouth together, as if finding him wanting, as she told him that running from his problems would never solve anything.

He knew that. Of course he did. But it helped, it gave him the distance he needed, the time he craved to prove he was more than the sum of his family’s actions and mistakes. He hadn’t said that, but he thought she’d seen it all the same, for she’d dropped the subject and huffed her agreement when Kylo had asked her not to tell anyone who he was, or where he was going.

Now they were back, and as Kylo swept into the dingy bar of Maz’s castle, Madana and Bia flanking him, he wished he were anywhere but here, and that the reason for his return was happier.

Maz didn’t greet him right away, but that didn’t bother Kylo. He merely nodded to Madana and Bia, who quickly slipped into the crowd, and found himself a table in one of the most secluded corners of the bar. He couldn’t even summon the energy to start when Maz approached him at last, her ever-present tray of drinks discarded somewhere as she hoisted herself up onto the seat across from him, all-seeing eyes enlarged by the lenses she wore on her face.

“It’s gone, isn’t it,” Kylo said without preamble, a question and a statement, hating the hollow harshness of his own voice, hating that he still cared enough to ask when this should have stopped mattering to him as soon as he left Ben Organa-Solo and the Jedi behind in that Tatooine junkyard six years ago.

The Jedi. Kylo almost laughed, but laughter would have hurt more than sitting in Maz’s castle begging for scraps of information already did.

In many ways, the Jedi were supposed to be like gods, even if they had always denounced being portrayed as such. To be a Jedi you had to be above base needs, base thoughts, base actions—you needed to be _more_ , a legend given flesh, powerful and righteous and devastating in both battle and discipline. To be a Jedi was to project infallibility, to both mortality and the temptations of the dark side. The Jedi had believed this made them strong, that this was the source of their powers, but to Ben it had made them impossible, and to Kylo it only made them… less.

That was how Kylo had come to see it, anyway. There were many, he knew, who would claim that he was simply bitter because he had never been able to stop _feeling_ enough to be a Jedi, but the people who would say that no longer mattered. In the days before the Empire, the Jedi Order had encouraged a lack of attachments to anything but duty and responsibility, and to better foster that slavish dedication to an archaic set of rules they had taken children from their families young, before they could comprehend love and dedication to anything that wasn’t the Order, and from there the Jedi had trained them to be perfect soldiers, blindly obedient, programmed nearly from birth. It hadn’t always worked. Constant perfection and control, as it turned out, was a lot of pressure, the type that _broke_ those who could not bend enough to weather it. It had broken his grandfather, who had been taken too old to truly shed his attachments. It had pushed Kylo away, much for the same reasons, he suspected. The fact that he was here now was a testament enough to the fact that he had failed in his quest to stop caring about his family.

He wondered, as Maz’s face softened in what looked like _sympathy_ , if that pressure was what had finally destroyed Skywalker’s academy, too.

He’d felt the disturbance a year ago, a pain in his head that had radiated through the shredded bond between master and apprentice, but he had ignored it; convinced himself it was nothing even as he’d felt the Force echo in agony. It had been months until he’d heard the rumours, and when he had, he hadn’t believed them. He’d laughed, because the idea of anyone being able to destroy an entire academy full of Force-sensitive students, of _Jedi_ , was ludicrous until he remembered it had been done once before, and on a much larger scale, by Kylo’s own blood. The sudden _lurch_ , the pain he’d felt in the Force had suddenly made some sort of horrifying sense, and Kylo had spent months chasing shadows in between runs with the _Myrmidon_ until at last he’d come here, only to receive confirmation in Maz Kanata’s eyes.

“Skywalker?” Kylo managed to say, closing his eyes briefly, hating himself for caring. He was supposed to be better than this, stronger than this.

“Reports differ,” Maz replied.

“What happened? How does one destroy a conclave of Jedi with barely a whisper in the wind?” He paused, expression hardening. “How does the most powerful Jedi in the known galaxy not stop them?”

“ _Luke_ was betrayed, one galactic standard year ago,” Maz said, unimpressed. Kylo didn’t read into it. Rarely were people’s tones with him anything but. “It is the way of the dark side. I am told one of his students turned on him, and in doing so destroyed them all. The betrayed are often unprepared.” She suddenly leaned forward, adjusting the lenses covering her eyes. “You are no stranger to the dark side, much as you like to pretend otherwise. You’ve heard its whispers, leaned into its touch, briefly tasted what it has to offer. Do not look be so shocked that another may have given in where you merely ran.”

The words made Kylo stiffen, his eyes narrowing involuntarily over the top of his mask, a flood of protests and justifications cluttering his mind before he bit them back, alongside the snarl that had formed.

“And the more noble thing would have been to stay, is that it?” Kylo bit out. “Die with the rest after failing to protect them?”

“Hmm,” Maz replied, looking unfazed by his words. “You see so much criticism where none exists, child. Nothing good comes from being stuck in the past.”

“I am not stuck in the past,” Kylo snapped, “else I would be laying dead on the ground right now. Staying in the past was staying with Skywalker, trying to resurrect the corpse of something already broken.” _They got what they deserved_ whispered the dark voice in his head, but Kylo breathed out and willed it away. He knew the origin of such thoughts, and had become far more adept at ignoring them over the years. “I’ve spent too much time chasing down leads, but trusted sources are few and far in between,” he continued, voice more regulated and calm. “Do you know who betrayed them?”

Maz was looking at him with an unreadable expression, but she merely sighed, pushing herself to her feet. “No. In this, I am as blind as you.” Kylo tried to crush the disappointment in his chest, but Maz’s information was the most he’d managed to get in all his months of searching. Stars knew why he cared. The Jedi were weak, teachings faulty and eaten away from the inside out, much like the Republic itself, and their recent destruction was only proof of that.   It shouldn’t have hurt this much, seeing what he had once predicted in a fit of pique come to light, but something about it made bitter regret twist sour in his chest. For all Skywalker’s faults, he had been genuinely trying, trying to build the Jedi away from what they'd once been, and neither he nor the children in his care had deserved such an end.

“Thank you,” Kylo made himself say, holding Maz’s gaze steadily as she studied him.

“It is not strength, child, to deny the care you feel for others.”

Kylo didn’t reply, and he didn’t move until Maz was once again making her rounds, the air leaving his lungs in a rush that made him feel empty, little more than a husk, mind a flurry of thoughts. He pushed himself away from the table, suddenly needing to be anywhere but here, ignoring the heavy gazes of his crew as he strode outside and went around the back. When he was sure no one could see he pulled down his hood and removed the mask from his face, breathing in as he tried to use the sounds of Takodana to centre himself.

The process was… difficult. Takodana lived and breathed in ways ecumenopoleis like Coruscant and Nar Shaddaa did not, but the life flowed from something different, something calmer and older and more stable than what Kylo was used to. Perhaps to some Takodana’s life force would have been more comforting, a gentle whisper of peace and stability, of calm and serenity, but today all it served to do was remind Kylo of the attachments he hadn’t managed to rid himself of, and of the little voice that _still_ screamed in his head, begging him to return to Skywalker, to his mother.

That voice sounded suspiciously like Ben Organa-Solo, and he was harder to ignore than he used to be.

When Ben was a boy, he’d believed Skywalker invincible. This was the man, he’d been told, who’d defeated Darth Vader, who’d defeated the Emperor; it was impossible to imagine anything that might best him. Now, as Kylo stared up at Takodana’s blue skies, he laughed Ben’s stupidity—his own, if he were being honest. Skywalker was no myth. Skywalker was a _man_ , a man who made mistakes, a man who could be killed and bested like any creature could be. Kylo had known that for years, and yet there had still existed a small part of him that hadn’t truly believed it, and in the months he’d spent following leads before coming to Maz only to hear what he’d already known, he’d thought he’d come to terms with that. He thought of the pain in his mind, and he wondered if Skywalker could have survived. It was possible. Jedi were known for being hard, and Kylo’s severing of the master-apprentice bond between himself and Skywalker years ago meant that he could not sense definitively whether his old master lived or died either way. Perhaps—

Kylo shook his head. It didn’t matter, he told himself, even as Maz’s words rang within his head, repeating themselves over and over to the point where he almost didn’t notice the ship careening towards the planet’s surface in a barrage of smoke and flames.

It was the work of a moment to push himself to his feet, casting out his awareness in an effort to sense the lifeforms of those inside. Skywalker had taught him to do that once, dragging him out into the middle of the desert, unsympathetic to the way Ben had protested with a declaration that there was no life within a thousand clicks if their location, but unlike the desert, this time he was able to see his target. He was aware of some other people muttering, but he paid them little mind, because he _knew_ the design of that ship, knew it from raiding and watching countless others like it as the First Order encroached further into known space while the Republic huffed and tittered and did nothing that reached Kylo’s ear.

Nearby, a zabrak put down the massive crate he’d been carrying, watching the ship go. He whistled something to Kylo with a wry smile before going back to work, utterly unconcerned with the smoke streaked across the sky. The selfishness of the everyday criminal was something that suited Kylo just fine, because it meant no one tailed him when he pushed into the woods, following the dying ship’s trajectory until Maz’s castle was only a distant shape behind him, along with all the people within it.

Kylo had to smile at that, however wryly. If Madana knew Kylo had gone off chasing a downed First Order ship _alone_ , he’d never hear the end of it. He and his crew had made no friends among the First Order, running their little operations as they did, but they were lucky in that they were equal opportunity smugglers. The First Order, the Republic—limiting themselves to just one target would have eliminated buyers. The point wasn’t to make a political statement out of who he went after.

People tended to get killed for those, after all.

Weaving between the tree branches, Kylo slowed his run to a brisk walk as he saw the mess that lay ahead of him, the trees partially collapsed and torn where the ship had crashed into the canopy and slid across the forest floor, creating a violent, messy clearing that wasn’t so much a clearing as it was a hazardous zone of semi-flattened forest debris. Evening out his breathing, Kylo quickly slipped his mask back on and pulled his hood up, especially once he identified a mangled shape crumbled over one of the fallen tree trunks, the white armour stark against the earthy colours of Takodana and looking only slightly different than what Kylo remembered seeing on the holonet and in the homes of the Republic war heroes Organa would sometimes bring her son to.

Stormtroopers.

He had no right to be surprised. After all, he’d known what this ship was, but seeing the grunts of the First Order army here, so close to Maz’s castle, a place of freedom from all politics, felt… it felt _wrong_ , Kylo realised, but the wrongness went deeper than that, deeper than these armoured figures cluttering a planet like Takodana with sterile greys and whites. Something was off, he could feel it, and Kylo barely had enough time to recognise the dark curling in his gut as a _warning_ before the telltale sound of rapid footsteps had him reaching for his own weapons, the yellow and purple blades roaring to life just in time to block the incoming blow.

There was nothing to see of his opponent’s face. Where there might have been skin there was instead only a black slit set above a series of square shapes arranged in fives, each one looking more battered than the last, but even with the mask Kylo could read the shock radiating through the other’s form, the stiff, belated movements of someone who had been expecting a quick kill and had instead received a fight. Kylo bared his teeth, an action unseen behind the mask that covered the lower half of his own face, using his opponent’s distraction to force them backwards while he leapt from the concealing copse of trees into the manmade clearing.

It had been six years since Kylo had last seen a weapon that could stand up to his lightsaber, six years since he’d sparred with an opponent in possession of a blade that hummed and breathed like his own did, and even then his opponent had been smaller than him, younger, their movements unsure as Kylo carefully swung his grandfather’s blade to clash against the apprentice’s green one. Now, his grandfather’s lightsaber was nowhere in sight, replaced instead by two newer blades, the smaller of which, the purple one, he brought up to help deflect another series of blows as his opponent struck at him with quick, precise movements, the sounds of impact echoing throughout the unnatural crater of trees and smoking debris as Kylo’s weapon met each incoming blow of his opponent’s Force pike, trying not to choke on the dark side aura that surrounded them.

The fight was pure instinct. Once there had been a desire within Kylo to forget all of Skywalker’s teachings, to never use the Force again and launch his grandfather’s ‘saber from the nearest airlock, but he hadn’t, because as much as he hated the Force sometimes it was still part of him, something he would never be rid of, so he’d kept up his Force techniques, he’d kept up his fighting, and he was never more grateful for it than he was now as he whirled around and tried to get a few hits of his own in, refusing to be distracted by the way his opponent spun their red blade, searching for an opening in Kylo’s defences. They were smaller than him, whoever— _whatever_ —they were, and faster too, but Kylo’s reflexes had anyways been good, and he was stronger. He struck with the purple lightsaber, pivoting to the side when his opponent retorted with another quick jab, bringing both ‘sabers down to trap the masked figure’s blade, hissing when they lashed out with a kick that almost made him trip over one of the downed tree trunks.

Ideal terrain was a joke. In real life, Skywalker had once explained, you will not fight on the perfectly even floor of a cleared-out room, and so Kylo had grown up learning to stumble over sand, over rocks, using the Force to augment his physical abilities where he could. There was no need for stealth here, so every step Kylo or his opponent took made the broken forest crunch beneath them as they clashed and fought and did their very best to _tear_ , feet tangling in branches and foliage and fallen trunks. Kylo’s world had narrowed to the point where their weapons met, his instincts carrying him while he snarled his rage and his challenge. Using the Force, he leapt from the ground and onto the surface of the ruined ship to avoid a sweep from his opponent’s pike, purple ‘saber braced in front of him.

There were more bodies here, barely distinguishable through the smoke billowing from the downed craft, a few in white and one in dark grey. A transport, perhaps, but he had no time to ponder further, barely twisting away in time to avoid a killing blow. He pushed back, letting himself drop from the wreckage to the forest floor as his opponent glided towards him, lightsaber held out in from of them.

Then, to his dismay, the figure the figure _spoke_.

“Jedi.”

It was little more than a hiss, a release of air that barely made it through the mask, but Kylo heard it all the same, and was barely quick enough to bring his yellow ‘saber up to deflect the blow as the figure brought the pike down. He could feel red creeping in on his vision and he hissed, using the Force to push the figure back as they had done to him before they were fighting again, weapons clashing as they clamoured up and down the forest debris. It was like something had awakened deep within his mind, and he could feel the Force at his fingertips, swirling around him, swirling around _them_ , before it narrowed to a point around his opponent’s throat. Kylo bore down on it, squeezing and watching and stalking forward as the masked figure began to claw at their robes.

Then the figure seemed to laugh.

“The other Jedi fell,” they hissed as he drew near, “and you, all alone, will fare no better.”

“I am no Jedi.”

Then, with narrowed eyes, Kylo pushed his ‘sabers into his opponent’s chest, looking at where he thought their eyes were until they went completely still. It was a few moments before he breathed out, carefully placing his ‘sabers back on his belt before he stepped back and cocked his head to the side, watching the masked figure as they lay prone on the forest floor.

Jedi weren’t supposed to kill their prisoners. It was something of a foolhardy ideal they’d championed during the Clone Wars, and Kylo remembered frowning as he’d read through the old histories, exclaiming that the Jedi could have ended the war several times over had they just gotten rid of key figures when they had the chance. Skywalker had frowned at those words, before reminding Ben, or Kylo, or whoever he’d been, that everyone should be afforded a chance at redemption.

“Mercy is not a weakness,” he’d cautioned, but Ben, almost Kylo, twenty-two years of age, had merely looked into his eyes and cocked his head to the side before saying, in a frightfully flat voice, “Maybe, not, but it’s not necessarily a strength, either. How many times could the Jedi and the Republic have ended the Clone Wars if only they’d had the stomach to kill who needed to be killed? For the Jedi, it seemed to have been less _mercy_ and more a chance at superiority.”

The masked figure’s body was still, and as Kylo crouched next to them, he wondered if the self-loathing would grasp at him, if Skywalker’s voice would ring in his head, angry and disappointed. He could have let his opponent live, he knew, likely should have, but the practical side of his brain, the part that had seen him through thick and thin and shrieked at the thought of letting an opponent stab him in the back, told him that he had done the right thing, that any information he could have torn out of the masked figure was likely worthless. Never in his entire life had he encountered a Dark Jedi, and despite the fact that Kylo liked to be prepared for most everything, he hadn’t ever thought he would. Really, he wasn’t even sure if that was what they were. Dark Jedi, Sith, or perhaps something else entirely—he did not know. Whoever they were, though, the Force had swirled around them in a sickening cloud that, now that he was no longer fighting for his life, made Kylo think of Ben Organa-Solo, and the sickly whispers that had visited the boy in his weakest moments.

He inhaled, and wondered whether he should remove the mask, or just thank his luck and pretend none of this had ever happened. That he hadn’t just killed another Force-user.

 _Maybe you know them_ , Kylo thought grimly as he pushed himself to his feet. That thought was considered carefully before he discarded it as unlikely—the galaxy liked its coincidences, but he thought that would be a bit much. Still, he remembered the lurch in the Force, the shock of the rumours that had driven him here, to Takodana, in the first place, seeking something that shouldn’t have mattered to him at all. Skywalker and his apprentices wouldn’t have fallen to a lesser enemy; a contingent of stormtroopers wouldn’t have been enough to wipe them all out. It would have taken someone—multiple people—like this, malicious Force-sensitives, to make a dent, but even then, Skywalker had defeated Vader and the Emperor—surely he would have been able to beat back an attack, if Kylo had been able to kill one such attacker single-handedly.

His foot nudged lightly at the Force pike. When Ben had been old enough to handle himself, before there had been other students, Luke had taken him to track down some old Jedi relics and archives. Weapons such as this had been mentioned, long-time tools of people wishing to destroy the Jedi, and Luke had told Ben, once, that he’d seen these so-called “Force pikes” on the backs of the Emperor’s Royal Guards, though they’d since become more common throughout the galaxy. Still, this was a model Kylo didn’t recognise, clearly modified, and he wondered if a group of people wielding such a weapon could have taken down Skywalker and his remaining students with help from an insider.

 _Perhaps_ , Kylo admitted, whispers and feeling the hot curl of anger in his chest, not directed at whoever had brought the students down but Skywalker himself. After all, Skywalker was supposed to protect them, and somewhere in the back of his head whispered an old voice that tried to tell him it didn’t matter, that it _shouldn’t have mattered_ , but the very real anger he felt told him it did. The acknowledgement of that was enough to give Kylo pause, and eventually he leaned over the fallen figure, carefully shifting them until he could remove the mask.

He was almost disappointed to see a human woman underneath, blood staining the brown skin of her lower face, hair pulled back in a simple series of braids. He tucked the helmet under his arm, wondering what Maz would make of it, and was about to head back when he heard something.

Hands curled over the lightsabers clipped back to his belt, Kylo waited. He was prepared for the shot that sailed towards him, only activating one ‘saber to deflect it, uncaring where the bolt went so long as it was away from him as he advanced towards the source of the shooting, deflecting two more shots with his ‘saber and one with the Force until he was able to dash forward and leap, bringing his weapon down in an arc to point at the neck of this new threat, snarling as they scrambled back instinctively. Their blaster remained raised until Kylo used the Force to yank the weapon from their grip, catching it as it flew close to his face before this new enemy could so much as blink.

That’s when everything seemed to stop, for there, mouth twisted into a snarl of his own, was a familiar face, in a semi-familiar uniform, with a wholly unfamiliar coldness burning in ice-blue eyes.

“Hux?”

To his credit, Hux didn’t step back any further, and the only indication that he was at all shocked was the way his mouth twitched, alongside the widening of his eyes. Kylo made no move to step towards him, the yellow blade of his ‘saber humming in ill-concealed aggression for a few more moments before he deactivated it, keeping the hilt firmly in one hand and stretched out in front of him defensively while his other clutched Hux’s blaster.

“Well,” Hux said, his voice level in a way that contradicted the intense look in his eyes. “It seems the cosmos has a sense of humour after all.”

 

* * *

 

In the end, Kylo ended up kneeling beside the body of his defeated opponent, eyes narrowed as he slowly removed the outer layer of their robes.

“These have a hole in them,” Hux said with disdain as Kylo handed it to him.

“So will your skull if you walk into Maz’s castle with a First Order general’s stripes on your sleeve.” He paused, resolutely not looking at Hux as he added, gruffly, “I suppose congratulations are in order.”

Hux was silent, and Kylo pretended to be busy rummaging through the corpse in front of him before he forced himself to look, _really_ look at Hux for the first time in three years.

Hux looked tired. His skin was sallow and thin and the area under his eyes dark, like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since the last time Kylo had seen him, but his posture was straight and true, if overly rigid, and his mouth was pulled into a severe line, eyes focused at a point just over Kylo’s shoulder. His eyes themselves were colder, too, a brilliant ice-blue that Kylo had thought might have been a trick of the ice caves during their last encounter, but they pulled him in all the same, and it made him realise that the years had done nothing to dim the hunger and the strange longing that had stretched between them ever since their   encounter on the Smuggler’s Moon six years ago, when Hux was but a major and Kylo a paltry few years into his smuggling career. The passage of time made Kylo wonder whether Hux had achieved what he’d set out to do. The galaxy whispered, as it always did, but until the lurch in the Force, the only whispers Kylo had ever paid attention to were the ones that contained locations: where to strike, where the more lucrative deals were, how to avoid people who might wish him harm. Then he’d spent too much time chasing ghosts, and really, he shouldn’t be surprised that yet another one would turn up here, now.

All things considered, Kylo thought he was taking it pretty well, ignoring the twist in his gut that screamed at him to run and _want_ all at the same time. Looking at Hux now, that time on Ilum seemed a whole other lifetime ago, and Nar Shaddaa lingered more like a half-remembered dream than a proper memory.

It had happened though, it had all happened, and that was why the both of them still lived, he suspected, when they could have—and should have—killed each other by now.

“Who was she?” Kylo asked, indicating the body in front of him, uncaring of the way his mind momentarily strained at the obvious attempt to redirect his own thoughts. Hux’s lip curled in response.

“Inept, apparently,” he replied, nudging the body with his boot as though personally offended not by the fact that Kylo had killed her, but rather the fact that she’d had the gall to die at all and inconvenience him. Kylo didn’t know who she’d been to Hux—a bodyguard, perhaps, though there were better uses for someone with her skill set—but he didn’t care, and it looked as though Hux didn’t, either. At least not on a personal level.

Kylo said nothing else after that, content to sit on one of the pieces of debris, the hilt of one ‘saber clutched in his hand as Hux removed portions of his uniform, only to slowly replace it with the cloth from the fallen woman’s attire. A better person would have killed or stunned Hux and taken him, and reports of the dead woman, to someone like Organa, but Kylo wasn’t a hero like his parents were. He wasn’t on a crusade to make the galaxy a better place. Instead, he apparently helped generals of remnant Empire splinter groups because of his own selfish attachment. He wondered if his grandfather would have been proud or disgusted.

“You’re a constant surprise,” Hux commented out of nowhere, a disgruntled expression flickering briefly across his face as his gloved hands skimmed over the burnt and torn parts of the fabric. Kylo exhaled, mouth curving into an expression of mirth that Hux could not see, though it swiftly vanished when Hux continued, a sneer in his voice, “though I suppose that’s to be expected of a _Jedi_. And here I was thinking that you were stealing the crystals merely for profit. I thought Jedi weren’t supposed to kill their prisoners.”

“I’m no Jedi,” Kylo said, keeping his voice as level as he could despite the oddly sluggish rage that flickered to life in his chest, warring with something else, something equally as primal, at Hux’s mention of Ilum’s ice caves. “Maybe I killed a Jedi. Maybe I just found the lightsabers lying around. I’m good with my hands.”

Hux just snorted. Under his ministrations, the stolen attire seemed to almost clean itself up, hiding what Kylo suspected were the man’s regulation underclothes beneath. Even so, he looked wilder, more _undone_ than he had in the crisp uniform, more like he belonged in this section of the galaxy and less like the outsider he was.

Kylo glanced away before those thoughts had a chance to go any further, vaguely aware that Hux had started speaking again.

“—galaxy needs less _mysticism_ ,” Hux muttered, straightening the fabric and reaching up to smooth back his hair, eyes flicking between the fallen woman and Kylo, “and her ilk are no good to us if they cannot hold their own against simple smuggler. Or perhaps,” he murmured, eyes darkening as he caught Kylo’s gaze over the mask, “not so simple.”

Kylo’s response was yet another pregnant silence, though he did rise to his feet and step forward, his focus now on ensuring that Hux’s uniform was completely covered. Someone would stumble across the transport and the bodies, raise an alarm, perhaps, for the bright white of the stormtrooper uniforms would give away their connection to the old Empire even if one didn’t necessarily know of the First Order, but Kylo did not intend to be standing around when that happened.

Exhaling, he smoothed his hands over Hux’s shoulders and up, threading them through Hux’s hair to loosen it from the more severe style. _Wild_ , he thought, an almost absent quality to the word as his hands dragged Hux further and further away from the image of _pristine officer_ and more towards an image that people still might remember, yes, but not because it was out of place. It was simple enough to hide the smouldering holes Kylo’s lightsabers had left in the fabric, Kylo taking a brief moment to be grateful for the thicker material of the outer layer and the style, which allowed him to place one side over the other to more effectively conceal the damage he had done. It wasn’t as long on Hux as it had been on the woman, but it would do. Moreover, it would help conceal the jodhpurs Hux still wore.

Eyes sliding to Hux’s boots, Kylo frowned. They were too shiny, too well-made, but forcing Hux to wear the dead woman’s shoes wouldn’t solve anything, not with their presumed size difference, so with a grunt of irritation Kylo slid to his knees, dragging a handful of dirt and soil over the boots and jodhpurs and ignoring the way Hux seemed to freeze above him, likely irate about Kylo smudging his uniform further. He barely noticed the intimacy of the position until one of Hux’s gloved hands managed to find its way under the chin of Kylo’s mask, tilting his head back so that he might meet Hux’s gaze.

“It’s strange,” Hux said, eyes burning with something dark and almost proprietorial, “how you always seem to end up here, with me, with all the scum pits of the galaxy you could have tossed yourself into.”

 _I rather like you on your knees_ was the unspoken sentiment, whispered to him from Hux’s controlled mind. Kylo didn’t respond—couldn’t, really, his mind suddenly alight with memories of his last encounter with Hux, those three years ago, the air between them heating so rapidly that, for a moment, Kylo even forgot what it was to breathe. Ilum was supposed to be their last goodbye, yet the connection still lingered, the pull was still there, a ravenous thing that held them together and that prevented Kylo from moving as Hux’s hands rose to his mask, teasing the edges. On Ilum, they had fallen upon each other without thought, and left each other with the idea that things were finished, that they would go about their separate ways. If Kylo hadn’t bothered with finding any bed partners after that, it meant nothing, only that he had more important things to worry about. He hadn’t ever intended to see Hux again, even if the memory of Hux’s touch still burned his skin, even if he had gotten himself off time and time again to thoughts of red hair and blue eyes and the weight of someone else’s cock heavy between his clenched thighs.

 _There are no coincidences_ , he remembered reading once, in one of the old texts Ben and Luke had been trying to decipher—not to follow the old Jedi Code to a tee, that world was dead and Luke had had no desire to revive it in its entirety, despite making some of their same mistakes, but just to learn, to know where the old Jedi had gone wrong. _There are no coincidences. There is only the will of the Force_.

 _No_ , Kylo snarled mentally. _There is only my will. There is only what I make of myself. The Force does not control me._

“I didn’t think of you after Ilum,” Kylo said, growled words sounding false even to his own ears. Hux’s answering smile was sharp, his thumb brushing over the rim of Kylo’s mask where material met skin.

“I did not think of you either,” Hux murmured, lifting Kylo from his knees with but a finger and holding him there, prone, stripped despite his layers and vulnerable despite his powers. “Why should I care where some reckless smuggler was hiding himself, hm? A reckless smuggler who inserted himself into a confrontation that didn’t initially concern him, who commandeered a First Order ship from right under the noses of a bunch of gathered officers, who spread his legs so nicely for me once on some forsaken ice planet. No, Kylo, I didn’t think of you at all.” Hux was still whispering that lie when he leaned forward, mouth brushing against the mask in a way that made Kylo’s lungs forget their function, not helped by the way Hux’s hand skimmed the inside of his clothed thigh. He let himself bask in it, in the waves of desire and arousal that he could read even without use of the Force, leaning his forehead against Hux’s as the other man’s hand slid up into his hair, where the hood had long since fallen off.

“You got a bigger coat,” he murmured into the space between them, one hand lifting to rest on Hux’s arm where the greatcoat, rank proudly sewn onto the sleeves, was draped. Hux shifted. Up close, his eyes looked greener.

“I seem to recall someone saying I needed one.”

The silence lay thick between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, only heavy with unspoken intent. Slowly, he reached forward, rearranging part of the woman’s tattered cowl and settling it over Hux’s bright hair.

“Someone could see, General,” Kylo murmured, not missing Hux’s reaction to the use of his title. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“I suppose you have some quaint little hovel hidden around here,” Hux replied, but it lacked any bite, and his eyes were hungry. “You did, after all, mention a castle.”

Kylo’s lips quirked behind the mask, and he knew Hux could see the smirk reflected in the creases of his eyes. “I may,” he said, but before Hux could say anything else he reached out, seizing the man’s wrist, projecting deadly seriousness into his voice and expression when he added, “but they are not fans of politics, and less are friends of the old Empire.” He did not pretend to know everything about Maz, but she knew the Force, and she would not throw her lot in with the First Order, not when it reeked of the Empire and the Dark Side. “Stay by my side, and do your best not to speak. Politics of any kind are not welcome here.”

Hux levelled him with a half-lidded stare. “We all have to choose a side eventually, Kylo,” he said, but he inclined his head, signalling his agreement. Kylo’s grip relaxed, and he nodded in return, a half-smile returning to his face.

“It almost suits you, you know. A bit of ruggedness.”

Hux’s nose scrunched up, but the heat was slowly creeping back into his eyes as he trailed one hand up Kylo’s chest.

“Perhaps, but I do believe the ‘rugged scoundrel’ look suits you best,” he murmured, before giving Kylo a firm push, which Kylo took for the prompt it was.

“If you’re bringing the coat, hide it better,” he said. Turning around, he then began the trek back to Maz’s castle, silencing the buzzing in his head that screamed that this was a bad idea, that this could only end badly, bringing a First Order general into the heart of Maz’s operation. It felt almost like a betrayal of her trust, but he consoled himself with the thought that Hux likely wouldn’t care enough to divert the First Order’s forces against a backwater place like this. There was nothing they could want here, after all, yet…

“Why crash here?” Kylo murmured as they walk. Hux, only a step or two behind him, let out an audible scoff.

“You think we planned to come to this planet at all? It was an unfortunate turn of events.” He didn’t elaborate further, but Kylo sensed no deceit in his words, so he let the conversation trail off. They walked in silence the rest of the way there, until the ancient stone of Maz’s castle became visible through the forest path, surrounded by a variety of ships haphazardly landed on whatever stretch of clear land was available. Stopping a little ways from the entrance, Kylo turned back to look at Hux, whose mouth was pressed in a firm line, but his eyes glittered with a challenge when Kylo met them, and so Kylo continued forward, slipping back into the folds of the cantina-like atmosphere within, Hux at his back like a wraith.

Maz was nowhere to be seen, but Kylo didn’t doubt she was here somewhere. A flash of orange alerted him to Bia’s presence, as did the ripple of her Force-signature, but besides her sidelong glance very few people looked towards them, everyone minding their own business and not caring about the two dark-clad figures who had just walked in the door. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hux surveying the room, his mouth twisted in the beginnings of a sneer, but Kylo didn’t give the man any more time to survey, instead guiding him over to a table in the corner and hailing one of the servers for drinks.

“This feels familiar,” Hux said dryly once he slid into his seat, drink in hand. Kylo smirked, and couldn’t help but picture that younger Hux, pathetically out of his depths as he tried to navigate the Smuggler’s Moon, and that younger Kylo, still new to the smuggling scene, impulsively stretching out his neck for him.

It struck him, then, how poor a decision this was, bringing Hux into the heart of Maz’s operations—Hux, a high-ranking officer of a military expansionist force that was inching towards open warfare with the galaxy’s slumbering protector. _Almost as poor a decision as him bringing a smuggler straight to the First Order’s base_.

“How are you planning to get out this time?” Kylo murmured, trying to infuse good humour into his words but falling somewhat short. “I doubt I’ll be able to pull the same stunt twice.”

Hux’s eyes lost a little bit of the hardness they’d acquired upon entering Maz’s castle. “I should hope not,“ he said. They lapsed into silence for a few minutes, but Kylo wasn’t blind, he could see the way Hux’s eyes tracked every movement he made, the way Hux’s lips parted on a quiet exhale when Kylo’s gaze met his. The charge from the forest was still there, muted but not destroyed by the ambience of Maz’s castle, the unspoken thirst for more; a need that kept throwing them together time and time again.

“Hux—“

“Han Solo!”

Maz’s voice rang clear through the room, silencing everyone and everything with its sharp volume and causing dozens of heads to turn simultaneously to the entrance, Kylo and Hux’s included, where Han Solo stood with an expression that spoke of regret and embarrassment, flanked by two men whose faces Kylo could not see in the half-light of the open door, and a rotund little orange-and-white droid.

Logically, he knew Solo would have known of this place. Ben’s father had known Maz since before his son was born—she had even spoken of Solo the first time Kylo had ever brought his ship here—and his name was still a legend in the smuggling rings and among people whom Solo had swindled in some way, but the risk of him somehow being on the same planet as Kylo had been calculated as minuscule.

About as minuscule as running into Hux three separate times on three separate planets, in fact.

He cursed the Force and averted his head, hoping to avoid the weight of Solo’s eyes, but he needn’t have bothered, for Maz was there, guiding Solo away, and it was with a curl of sickly rage that Kylo recognised one of the men flanking Ben’s father as they slunk in.

Ben and Poe Dameron had never been good friends, but they could have been, Kylo thought. The potential had been there—two boys, the sons of war heroes, of parents always more devoted to the _cause_ than to their children—but it had never been recognised, and ultimately Ben had been sent away, far away, exiled to the unforgiving deserts of Tatooine in an attempt to cure the fears of Organa and Solo while Dameron had been enveloped in a continuation of the war his parents had waged. It didn’t even matter that the Republic was still refusing to acknowledge the First Order as a threat, that they were turning their attentions towards doing nothing and preserving a fragile neutrality that had never existed, Kylo could smell conflict on the horizon; he knew this so-called peace would not last. The man at his side, red hair hidden by the cowl, was proof enough of that, but the minuscule urge he had to tell, to warn, was overwhelmed by the certainty that the Republic—stagnant, unlearning beast that it was—wouldn’t do anything about it anyway.

 _But Organa would_ , a voice whispered. _If you told her, she would do something about it._

 _And when she did_ , came another voice, mocking and cruel, reaching from the parts of Kylo’s psyche that wondered what it would have been like had the shadowy whispers from his childhood not been driven away, _Hux would die for it_.

He glanced at Hux, stiffer and more formal than Kylo had ever known him to be, and he knew he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell Organa, couldn’t risk Hux dying because Kylo had wavered and chosen a side in a hypothetical war that hadn’t yet come about. Whatever this strange thing between him and Hux was, this intangible mess that had already led them both to preserve the other at the expense of common sense, that had led to their respective silences, Kylo wouldn’t be the one to betray it. Besides, it wasn’t his place to tell the Republic they were being foolish, to preserve a relic so hell-bent on its own destruction that it was willing to turn on the person who had fought tirelessly to restore it.

With Solo around, though, he knew he might not have a choice. The man was infuriatingly good at noticing things that did not concern him, and Dameron was even worse. If Solo didn’t notice them, he didn’t doubt Dameron would, and then there’d be no slipping away. When Kylo snuck a glance in their direction, however, it wasn’t Solo or Dameron looking towards them, but rather the third man, dark-skinned and wholly unfamiliar to Kylo, his eyes flickering between them like he was trying to puzzle something out. Kylo felt a twinge of apprehension at that, but he did his best to keep his body language calm as he reached out to Hux, who looked as though he was trying his best to hide his face in the tattered cowl.

“Hux,” he said lowly, only for Hux to snarl, in an equally low pitch, _“what the hell are they doing here?”_

Kylo resisted the urge to look back over at Solo’s table, instead choosing to shrug. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Hux knew who Han Solo was—doubtless the First Order had posters of Solo, Organa, and Skywalker plastered to the surface of everyone’s bunks with a caption that made it clear who the enemy was. “Many smugglers come here, and most don’t care about Solo, even if they know him; he’s notorious in all the wrong circles. Do you want to leave?” he asked, not even feeling a little bit guilty for using Hux’s discomfort as an excuse to leave Solo’s presence and the risk of discovery. Hux was careful to keep his head averted, but he pursed his lips and gave a curt nod.

“All right. Don’t stand too quickly; it will be too obvious and you’ll draw unwanted attention. Stand slowly, and stay behind me.”

“I’m not a child,” Hux hissed, and Kylo’s eyes narrowed even as his mouth quirked into a small smile, sight unseen behind the mask.

“No, but I seem to recall what happened last time you tried to be inconspicuous in a seedy place. Really, Hux, wearing a military uniform to a bar on Nar Shaddaa?”

The comment made Hux’s face colour slightly, and this time Kylo didn’t even try to repress his amusement. Still, the underlying fear that was prompting them to leave Maz’s castle, to get out of the line of fire, remained, and it leant an intense, almost pleading undertone to his voice when he looked at Hux and said, “this is my world, Hux, not yours. Trust me. Please?”

Hux looked at him for a few minutes before his face softened in a way that would have been almost imperceptible had his features not been so severe. Kylo tried to ignore the way Hux’s trust wrapped around him, not warm but comforting all the same, something that shouldn’t have existed but _did_. He stood slowly, aware that their respective heights had the potential to make them stand out but hopeful that, with the amount of near-humans and non-humans milling about, they wouldn’t look overly out of place.

“Come on,” Kylo murmured, beginning to move, cutting an effortless path to the door. He wasn’t expecting to be met outside the palace by Madana, who was looking at him with an expression that couldn’t seem to decide whether it wanted to broadcast displeasure, concern, or something else entirely.

“Kylo,” Madana said, his eyes flicking briefly from Kylo’s face to Hux. Hux, to his credit, met Madana’s silvery gaze, but his jaw was clenched, his entire body screaming his tension to both men present. Then Madana looked away, dismissive, and refocused back on Kylo. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said almost tiredly, something like resignation in his voice. Kylo reached out with the Force, brushing Madana’s mind and sighing when he was allowed in without much fuss. He wasted no time, imparting the images of Solo and Dameron and the third man, as well as the woman in the forest, and he knew Madana understood when his second’s mind spiked with protective distress.

“Ship’s ready to go for tomorrow,” Madana murmured once Kylo withdrew. “Stay there; Bia and I will keep an eye out and finish up. Make sure your friend gets off-planet if he needs to; we can’t afford to take him wherever he needs to go, and he won’t be welcome here long.” The look Madana shot at Hux was laden with unspoken warning, and Kylo almost started when he felt one of Hux’s hands curl around his wrist, grip so tight Kylo thought it would have left bruises were he holding bare skin, and wasn’t that a thought, Hux’s skin against his, devoid of any barrier. It made his head fog for a minute, remembering the weight of Hux between his thighs, the heat of his mouth and gaze, and when he glanced back Hux’s eyes were firmly riveted to him, darkened by the shadow the cowl cast. No doubt aware of the sudden charge in the air—perhaps even a side-effect of his own pheromones—Madana’s eyes lost their frightening intensity as he slipped around both Hux and Kylo without another word to make his way inside, leaving Kylo to lead Hux towards where they’d landed the _Myrmidon_ and hustle him inside.

“So this is your ship,” Hux said once the door was sealed, but his hand was still heavy on Kylo’s wrist, and Kylo didn’t have a chance to respond before Hux was pushing him against the bulkhead, eyes intense and expression—

 _Hungry_.

“I am an ambitious man, Kylo,” Hux murmured while Kylo remained still, willingly trapped and held, contained between Hux’s body and the durasteel walls. “I want many things, owed to me and mine, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve wanted something as much as I want you.” His hand trailed up Kylo’s arm, skimming over the ridges presented by partial armour, but Kylo didn’t dare look away from his face, or from glimmer of teeth as Hux’s tongue darted out to wet his lips.

“Hux—“ he started, but Hux cut him off by reaching up to the mask that concealed the lower half of Kylo’s face, black-gloved hands skimming over the intricately designed leather, and Kylo, caught in the lull of Hux’s eyes, almost thought he could feel Hux’s skin against his own. They’d been so close on Ilum, but even then there’d always been that barrier, physical and metaphysical, and now. Now, hidden from the world by the _Myrmidon’s_ reinforced walls, there was nothing but the walls they themselves chose to maintain, and _Kylo_ —

Kylo wanted them gone like nothing he’d ever wanted before, and so when Hux’s hands slid under his hood, grasping at the edges of the mask and the clasp that kept it in place, Kylo let him remove it, lips parting as Hux drew back, the mask firmly in hand, eyes half-lidded and blazing with a lust that Kylo had never before seem directed at himself.

“Shall I take you, then, Kylo?” Hux whispered, cocking his head to the side in a deliberate motion that made Kylo’s breath hitch. “Or would you prefer to do the taking?”

Kylo’s throat went dry, his own eyes trailing quickly over Hux’s body. “Have me,” he whispered, wondering if Hux would see the trust in those words.

Ben Organa had been desired once, Kylo thought as Hux pulled him forward, deeper into the belly of the ship. There had been an apprentice, all those years ago, who had looked at Skywalker’s lanky, awkward nephew and saw something in him worth desiring, and Kylo still remembered the way he’d trembled beneath the other boy’s hand before shoving him away, frightened, not of some archaic rule against attachment that Skywalker had scorned in his teachings, but of being—

 _“Your parents don’t love you, boy. Your mother, your father, your uncle, the other apprentices—they only pretend, because they fear you. They fear what you can do, but I understand, Ben. I’m the only one who understands_.”

The memory of that voice made Kylo shudder even as Hux’s hands began to dip under clothing, and Kylo barely had the presence of mind to direct them to his own sleeping chambers before Hux had successfully rid him of his hood and his gloves, fingers working deftly at the fastenings of his clothing and the belts that draped over his waist, keeping his lightsabers pinned to his sides, and it was with shaking hands that Kylo began to do the same, unravelling the very clothing he himself had placed on Hux not two hours before, letting the tattered cowl and drapings fall to the floor before he worked to divest Hux of what remained of his uniform only for Hux to shove him bodily against the wall, shirt untucked and jacket hanging loose, halfway to ruined as he forced his lips against Kylo’s, the kiss brutal for all that it encompassed.

“You,” Hux snarled, biting at Kylo’s mouth and pressing him further into the bulkhead, “you were nothing but a mistake from the very beginning.”

“A mistake you’ve made multiple times,” Kylo replied once he was able, eyes riveted to Hux’s flushed face, lips tingling, already sore from Hux’s attentions. _Why_ , he wanted to ask, but _why_ hardly mattered, not now. This wasn’t a fumble in the dark with a now-dead boy, or even a rough and hurried tumble in the ruins of an old order—this was something else, and that _something_ was what made the air so impossibly thick now, teeming with things unsaid and things unknown, and even in this state Kylo could recognize the heavy hand of the Force as it pressed down around them, salvation and damnation both.

The Jedi of old taught that the Force was, in its own way, all-knowing, but Kylo had never believed that, not truly. It learned and grew with them, it connected them—a string that could be no more all-knowing than a weapon, but that could be a gentle hand or a guiding fist depending on which direction one chose to follow. It was everything, and it was nothing, danger and safety, a blanket that could warm and protect as surely as it could smother and entrap, and right now it almost seemed to _sing_ around them, the very air they breathed alive with the vibrations of the galaxy.

“Hux,” Kylo begged, suddenly unable to bear the weight of it all, overwhelmed as he’d been all those years ago when he’d woken with a hole in his mind to see Skywalker’s frightened face hovering above him, promising him that the voice was gone, that he was _sorry_ , that— “Hux, please, I need you, _please_.”

Hux’s response was an almost inhuman growl and the sudden tearing of dark fabric as he forced Kylo’s clothing from his body, dropping it in an uncaring pile on the dark floor tiles.

“You do,” he breathed, dragging still-gloved hands up Kylo’s chest, over the exposed skin. “You _need_ me, Ren. Come on then, darling, let me see you, all of you.”

As if in a trance, Kylo did as bade, shucking the rest of his clothes until he stood nude before Hux, body and all the scars contained within it on display, and perhaps he would have felt self-conscious had it not been for the way Hux seemed to drink him in, one gloved hand reaching out to curl possessively around Kylo’s wrist and tug him closer as his other reached around Kylo’s waist, pawing at the skin below his back. The feeling of Hux’s open uniform jacket brushing against the skin of his chest made Kylo shiver, and a moan tore from his throat when Hux smirked and leaned down to _lick_ a wet stripe up over his left nipple, expression nothing short of predatory.

“Aren’t you lovely,” he breathed against Kylo neck before dragging him over to the bed and settling between his spread thighs. “What would you do if I said I wanted to keep you, hm?” The words were punctuated with the removal of Hux’s undershirt, the white of his skin a stark contrast against the gloom of Kylo’s half-lit room. “I could bring you back, keep you locked up in my chambers, waiting for me every night but, oh,” he murmured, sliding one gloved hand down Kylo’s cheek, thumbing over the scars that criss-crossed his face and split his lip. “You wouldn’t like that for long, would you? No, darling, I can’t keep you locked up anymore than the Republic can stop what is to come.” Then he leaned down and whispered into Kylo’s ear, low and deadly, “but I don’t have to lock you up to make you _mine_.”

Perched on Kylo’s thigh, still wearing his gloves and his full uniform below the waist, Hux looked like something Ben Organa would have conjured up in a dream, and so when Hux leaned down again Kylo didn’t try to stop himself from surging up and meeting him in another heady kiss, Hux’s mouth working against his own, a tongue that was not Kylo’s pressing in, teeth that were not his seizing his bottom lip and biting, _pulling_ , until Kylo felt the skin break.

“Beast,” Hux crooned as he drew back, blood staining his front teeth as Kylo turned his head and panted into the pillow.

 _“The Jedi,”_ Luke Skywalker whispered in his head, _“were of the belief that love led to the dark side. That you had to rid yourself of attachments or risk losing yourself to them. But they misunderstood, I think. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and those things can be controlled—should be controlled—but love itself will save you, Ben. Not condemn you.”_

Rage. Fear. _Passion_. When Kylo looked at Hux he could see all of those things, and he wondered if creatures like them could love, truly, as others did. If perhaps _hunger_ was the only way to express such affections. Ben had been loved, but not like this, and he remembered, once, an operation that had nearly went wrong, stranding his crew in a storm that had only let up when they’d managed to reach the eye. Hux’s attention felt like that, like standing in the centre of that storm, and when Hux pushed a gloved thumb into his mouth Kylo didn’t even try to resist the urge to bite down, relishing in Hux’s pained snarl as he drew his hand back, only to press in with two more fingers and allow Kylo to remove the glove with his teeth.

This time, when Hux rested a hand against his face, it was skin Kylo could feel against the scars, cold and steady. He pressed into it without thinking, without care, watching as Hux removed the second glove with his own teeth before bare hands were skimming up his torso, brushing over his peaked chest and settling, ever so lightly, against his throat.

“I should have killed you on that damn ice planet,” Hux said. “So many lives under my thumb and I can’t kill one fucking smuggler.”

Perhaps he should have, Kylo reflected with half-lidded eyes and a pleased hum. Or perhaps Kylo should have simply left that young major from years ago to his fate on the Smuggler’s Moon, back when everything had still been so new, the Jedi still a recent shadow in his mind. They had both changed, he and Hux, but even then, against the odds, here they were. There was none of the youthful softness to Hux now that had been present on Nar Shaddaa, but that sort of naivety had no place here now, in the men they had become, the men circumstance had shaped them to be.

“ _General_ ,” he whispered, lifting his own hand to brush his knuckles against Hux’s cheek, eyes sharpening with pleasure when Hux’s breath hitched, hands tightening against Kylo’s neck before he was leaning forward, down, his teeth biting deep into the skin of Kylo’s neck, the pain making Kylo arch into the body above him as Hux began repeating the action over and over, hands sliding down to press more bruises into Kylo’s hips as his mouth trailed lower and lower. Sugary-sweet pain overrode Kylo’s concentration, and when he felt Hux’s teeth in the tender skin of his inner thighs he couldn’t stop the gasp that left him, lowering a hand to tangle in Hux’s hair as he drew one leg up, a soft plea escaping him before he could even think about stopping it.

“That’s it, Kylo,” Hux purred against Kylo’s thigh. “Sing for me.”

Then, without warning, he enveloped Kylo’s cock in his mouth, like he had on Ilum, and Kylo _shouted_ at the sudden sensation, trying to arch up only to be held down by Hux’s hands at his hips, and he could feel himself teetering towards the edge as Hux continued to suck, not stopping even when Kylo begged, whimpering that he was close. The first press of Hux’s slick fingers against his hole only drew him closer, and when he looked down to see Hux staring up at him— _were his eyes ever green? Were his hands ever soft?_ —he couldn’t stop the yell that tore itself from his throat as he came, the Force swirling around them, cloying and so so _right_. Hux himself was unrelenting, continue to finger him open even as Kylo whimpered and panted, cursing slipping from between his lips as Hux pressed deep inside of him, stretching him, _preparing_ him, until Kylo was biting his knuckles from the overstimulation and swearing in earnest.

“I think I like you like this, Kylo Ren,” Hux purred, three fingers pumping in and out of Kylo with lazy abandon, but Kylo was done waiting, and so when Hux withdrew his fingers and crawled in between Kylo’s legs, slowly slicking his cock, Kylo acted, tightening his thighs around Hux’s hips and rolling them over until he was perched on Hux’s stomach, looking down at the General with a smirk as he reached back and ran teasing fingers up Hux’s cock, adjusting himself until he was able to slide back down on it with a loud moan as Hux gripped tight his hips, snarling, his earlier smugness completely gone by the time Kylo had fully seated himself.

“Do you like me like this too, _General_?” Kylo panted, arching his back and letting his hair tickle his back. The way Hux squeezed his hips would have been answer enough even if Hux hadn’t tried to fuck up into him, to roll them back over, held down by the weight of Kylo’s body above him.

“I hate you,” Hux hissed, pupils fully dilated, and Kylo only smirked as he began to swivel his hips slowly, then more quickly, until he was lifting himself up and down the length of Hux’s cock, thighs trembling with the effort and enjoying every choked-off snarl that came from the man beneath him. When Hux attempted to roll them again Kylo let him, breath coming in pants as Hux pushed him down onto his stomach and re-entered him swiftly, no longer in the mood for patience, for teasing, as he fucked into Kylo as brutally as Kylo suspected he could, the roughness only belied by the way Hux’s fingers tangled with Kylo’s own as the general braced himself, sharp curses splitting the air alongside the slap of skin as Hux drew them both closer to the precipice.

“Where’s your witty tongue now?” Hux bit out as Kylo moaned, and when Hux tugged his hips up he obeyed without question, keening as Hux wrapped one hand around his cock, drawing the other—their fingers still entwined—to press against Kylo’s chest as he continued to thrust.

“Look at me, Kylo,” Kylo heard and when he turned to look it was to see Hux, wild-haired and panting, and he didn’t even try to hold back the sound of his second orgasm as Hux crushed their mouths together, pulling Kylo back up against his chest as he chased his own release. Kylo’s ears were ringing, the air around him pressing in from all sides, so he lifted his arms, reached them back until he could slide his fingers through Hux’s fiery hair, and the groan Kylo pulled from Hux when he kissed him nearly sucked all the air from his lungs as he felt Hux’s hips stutter, as he felt the warmth of Hux’s release inside of him.

“Fuck,” Hux whispered, head dropping to the crook of Kylo’s neck, and Kylo, chest heaving with every breath, could only offer a low hum in response, hyperaware of the way their hands were still joined over his chest—over his rapidly beating, frighteningly mortal _heart_.

Slowly, Hux lowered them to the bed, his softening cock still nestled within the clutches of Kylo’s body as he pressed against Kylo’s back, teeth dragging against bruised skin.

“What a strange creature you are,” he heard Hux whisper against his shoulder before a tongue pressed against one of the bruises, making Kylo shudder, eyes slipping shut. For a moment he thought Hux would say something else, but no more words were forthcoming, and so Kylo allowed himself to simply rest, to _bask_ , the Force flowing through him in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever truly experienced before. Eventually Hux shifted, his softened cock slipping free and dribbling fluids down Kylo’s cheeks, but he hardly cared, and when he felt Hux slide in next to him, drawing a blanket up over them both, he let himself believe, just for a moment, that this time they wouldn’t have to say goodbye.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sleeping when he finally roused to the sensation of the bed dipping as Hux slipped back under the covers.

“What were you doing?” Kylo mumbled tiredly as Hux pressed up behind him, trying to turn his head to see even as his body protested every last movement, slow and sluggish, overwhelmed by the events of the day.

“Nothing,” came Hux’s reply as he slipped cold hands over Kylo’s shoulders, and Kylo was about to pry, to ask more questions, but the feeling of Hux’s hands in his hair cut off anything he might have said, lulling him into a sense of peace he’d never been able to achieve under his uncle’s tutelage.

“Where did you get these?” Hux murmured, fingers tracing the scars that had long since healed. Kylo hummed against the haze of sleep, nuzzling unthinkingly into the touch.

“Unfortunate run-in with a pack of wild nexu on Coruscant,” he murmured. “I wasn’t fast enough.” _Wasn’t strong enough_. Hux was silent for a few moments, eyes glowing a deep green in the light, and then he hummed, leaning down to trace his lips over the three diagonal claw marks, breath hot on Kylo’s face, and in the darkness of the room, the illusion of being alone in the galaxy firmly in place, Kylo let Hux roll him back onto his side, letting out a low moan as he felt Hux press into his body again. This time Hux’s thrusts were shallow, almost tender things, and when he came, he came with the quietest of sighs before reaching around and slowly bringing Kylo off as well, pressing a kiss to one of the bruises he’d left against Kylo’s neck.

“Sleep, darling,” was the last thing Kylo heard as he drifted off again, “and please forgive me.”

 

* * *

 

In the end Kylo returned to the Maz’s castle, body protesting each and every movement as the physical remnants of his night with Hux tried to tell him that he should have remained in bed. It was easy enough to ignore, however, and he slipped into the cantina with little more than a grunt as his armour brushed the raw scratches he hadn’t even registered in the heat of the moment, keeping his gait as even as he could and not missing a stride as Bia all but materialised at his side.

“Kylo,” she hissed, “we have a problem.”

He made a noncommittal noise, her words not fully registering. When he’d woken that morning, it had been to an empty bed, the carefully folded clothes and the smell of sex in the air the only proof that Hux had been there at all, and even though Kylo had known this was how it would end the memory of Hux’s hands, unexpectedly soft in the dark, and his parting words, still made something ache deep within his chest, mingling with the unease Kylo had been unable to shake since waking.

Against his own common sense, Kylo found himself hoping that Hux was all right, that he had returned to the First Order safe, and that, perhaps, Hux’s mind was just as stuck on their last encounter as his own was.

“Kylo!” Bia snapped, taking a swing at him. He blocked it, but only just, reflexes kicking in at the last second as he caught her wrist. Huffing, she wrenched her hand away, glaring at him with as much venom as she could muster. “Did you not hear me? Solo’s been asking after you. Madana’s in there keeping an eye on him as we speak, but we need to leave as soon as we can. There’s something _wrong_ , Kylo, I can—“ she broke off, frustrated, her lekku twitching as she dragged a hand over her face and hunched her shoulders, but before she could finish an exclamation of alarm caught his attention, and Kylo felt the unease in his chest expand just as someone beside him gasped and pointed up.

There, streaking across the sky, were faint beams of red light, and Kylo stood, rooted to the spot, as more and more people filtered out of Maz’s castle to stare, transfixed.

“What in the gods’ name—“ Bia started, but Kylo didn’t hear her, deafened by the sensation of over a billion voices screaming their fear directly into his head, growing louder and louder and  _louder_ before they fell abruptly, horribly _silent_ , and it was only Madana’s sudden appearance that kept him from keeling over entirely, his second’s silvery eyes awash with confusion and concern as he did his best to take Kylo’s weight onto himself. Beside him, Bia was rubbing her temple, a frown creasing her face, but Kylo barely registered it, barely registered _her_ , his chest heaving as he reached for the Force and was nearly blinded by the echo, by the gaping _hole_ that hadn’t been there only moments ago.

 _The Force connects all living things_ , Skywalker had told him once, a smile on his face. _The Force connects all living things, the Force connects all living things, the Force—_

“It was the Republic!” someone said, their voice loud over the awed murmurings of the gathered crowd. “The First Order—they’ve done it.”

 _The First Order_.

Kylo wrenched his head away from Madana’s concerned grip, standing and turning his eyes to the sky, where the red beams were still visible. His head felt thick, the deaths of so many weighing on his mind, and stars, the _Republic_ —

 _Ilum. The crystals_.

_“A weapon. You need the crystals for weapons, is that it? Are you building another Death Star? Reinforcing your ships? Oh, Hux, have some originality. You know the Republic would be on you the second you stepped into known space.”_

His own words rushed back to haunt him, and Kylo almost flinched, standing rapt as they played over in his head, almost like he’d said them yesterday and not years ago. He’d known, he’d _known_ , hadn’t he, and he didn’t—

_If you had told her, could you have saved them?_

Alderaan was a ghost that had haunted the Organa-Solo family for as long as Kylo could remember. It was written in the pain that had been present in his mother’s eyes when she’d told him about her father, when she’d tried to describe growing up on a world that no longer excited, when she’d put her all into the Republic only to have them turn on her. It was what drove her, Kylo knew, and so as a boy Ben had almost hated it, loathed the dead he did not know for taking his mother away from him, for the fear she could not always contain when she looked at him. Now, as the entire Hosnian System died in front of his eyes, Kylo could only wonder how she’d found the strength to even _stand_ after such a loss, if she’d looked at the remnants of her planet and wondered if she could have prevented that too.

A creeping sensation of calm washed over Kylo then, artificial but, for once, welcome, in a way Madana’s emotional tampering very rarely was. But it blotted out the echo of the screams, silenced the voices, and so Kylo allowed it, latched onto it, even, trusting his second to help ground him until he felt as though he could move again himself. Around them, the galaxy’s scum still clustered, their voices lowering and rising as they discussed what this meant, and when Kylo at last tore his eyes from the sky it was to see fear and perplexity written on the faces of almost everyone present.

“Solo’s gone back in,” Bia was murmuring to Madana, but Madana only nodded, his silvery eyes trained intensely on Kylo until Kylo gave him a curt nod. The calm lingered, even when Madana was no longer actively projecting, allowing Kylo to find his voice and say lowly, firmly, “We’re leaving.”

But they never got the chance.

Over the rush of the trees and the noise of the chatter came the telltale sound of TIE fighters, and most of them barely had time to move before the barrage of fire rained down from the sky, striking the ground and the old temple as people scrambled for cover. Kylo snarled as a flurry of dirt and debris flew into his face, and he heard Bia cough beside him, but it was the first hint of white among the green of Takodana’s forests that had the smugglers and outlaws truly scrambling as the first shots from the stormtroopers broke through the foliage, striking down a tattooed umbaran as the man dove for his weapon.

“Move!” Kylo snarled as he and his crew took cover behind the closest part of the ruined castle they could find, the earth rumbling beneath them as the First Order fighters and cruisers alike began to fire on the building. He felt rather than saw the top of the castle fall, the resounding crash sending Madana spiralling to the ground, where he unholstered his weapon and began firing at the approaching ‘troopers as the courtyard filled with the sounds of combat. Bia had drawn her weapon as well, face scrunched and eyes narrowed as she fired wildly from where she and Kylo were still pressed against the temple walls even as the stone fell to ruin around them.

It was almost like watching a holofilm, Kylo thought with a strange sort of detachment as another cloud of dirt blew up over them.  The destruction, the chaos, the death—things he had seen before, heard about on this sort of scale, but only through history, through memories that were not his could, could not be his own.  Over on the far side of the courtyard a group of smugglers seemed to be making a break for a ship, only to be gunned down or subdued, and above them, he could see a small freighter try to make a break for it, only to explode in a series of sparks and careen towards the ground as one of the TIEs landed a direct hit.

In the movies, these sorts of battles were always stretched out.  But now, as destruction rained around them, Kylo found he could barely keep up with it all, willing his mind to narrow down and focus as he watched people scramble and flee and die.

“Kylo!” he could hear Madana shout, just in time for Kylo and Bia to turn and take out the ‘troopers that had been encroaching on his second’s position, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. The First Order was armed, prepared, and there seemed to be an endless stream of white as more ‘troopers poured out of the trees. Above, Kylo could see a new ship soar across the sky, a streamlined design he had never before seen, and he knew they couldn’t keep this up forever. The smugglers weren’t made for combat like this, and the ones that hadn’t managed to escape were falling, which was why, when Kylo saw a bunch of troopers fly into the air, he couldn’t stop the way he jerked back in shock.

_What?_

That was when he caught sight of them: Solo, Chewbacca, Dameron, and the unknown man fighting like mad against the troopers amongst the rubble.

 _Of course they were stillhere_ , Kylo thought blankly, taking aim and firing.  _Where else would they be?_ There was no time to revel in victory when his shot connected, though, and for every white-armoured soldier he sent spiralling to the ground, another stepped up to fill its place.

“We’re sitting ducks here. I’m making a run for it,” Bia snarled, pushing away and running to another form of cover before Kylo could stop her, and Kylo felt his heart leap into his throat as he saw one of the ‘troopers aim for her, only to be stuck down by the dark-skinned stranger, who was wielding what appeared to be some sort of riot control baton, likely taken from the body of one of the troopers. From his position some metres away, Madana cursed, and then he was jumping out too, but before Kylo could follow another blast shook the castle, stone falling in front of him, cutting him off from his crew, and it would have crushed him had Kylo not reached out with the Force, stopping the rubble before it could crush him completely and giving him enough time to roll away.

Shouting, he pulled out his rifle and began firing from a new position, mouth curving in savage satisfaction behind his mask as he watched one of the ‘troopers fly back, but there were too many.

It was then that he saw them, the figure in black emerging from the smoke and the death and the ruin.

 _There are more?_ he thought wildly as the masked figure glided forward, exuding silent menace as they picked their way through the crumbled stone towards where Solo and the others were gathered, and with their arrival, the fighting almost seemed to change its direction, going from chaotic to controlled, and when Dameron lifted his rifle to fire at the figure, Kylo almost wanted to shout, to _warn_ him, but when he saw the figure’s weapon roar to life, the red of the double-bladed ‘saber’s blade a stark contrast to the devastation around them as blaster bolt was deflected, he was glad he’d kept his cover.

 _They’re small_ , Kylo thought, watching as the troopers fell in behind them, but he remembered the woman he’d fought in the woods and grimaced. The Force hadn’t swirled around the dead woman as strongly as it did this figure, who seemed to cut a sharp path through everything they encountered, and Kylo almost shivered at the way the dark side clung to them like a shroud, shielding them from his full view even as he crept forward, perhaps to see, perhaps to  _know._

“Han Solo,” the figure— _female_ —spoke then, voice distorted by the mask she wore, terrifying in how soft it was. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised you find you here. In all the stories, you always did have a tendency to show your face at inconvenient times.”

Solo looked frozen, and beside him, Dameron’s face had gone pale and determined. From his perch atop one of the fallen columns, using the Force to cloak his presence, Kylo did his best to keep an eye on them while searching for anything that might have told him where his crew had gone.

“The droid, Solo,” the woman said then, drawing Kylo’s attention back to the scene before him, and despite the mantras he’d chanted to himself over the years, the hatred and the anger that still festered deep within his heart, he couldn’t help but feel a flash of fear as she lifted her ‘saber and pointed it to Solo’s throat. “I would know its location.

“Sorry,” came Solo’s reply, “but you just missed it.”

The woman inclined her head to the side. “I see. In that case, perhaps your self-preservation instincts run deep enough for you to reveal the location of your son.” She stepped forward, the Force swirling around her. “I know he’s here, Solo. The Supreme Leader cannot be deceived, and has revealed as much to me. Tell me where he is, and perhaps I will let you and your friends live.”

“Ben is gone,” Solo said, but there was a new note in his voice, like a ragged, old wound that had been reopened, “and even if he was here, I would die before I told you anything about him! I know all about your _master_ , and you can tell him he won’t get Ben now anymore than he did before!”

The words shook Kylo, whose hands tightened on the jagged edge of the broken column that shielded him from view. _No, he doesn’t mean, he can’t—_

“In that case, it appears you are of no use to me,” the woman said, the regret in her voice menacing for its supposed sincerity, and Kylo was hardly aware he was moving until he’d leapt from his hiding place, ‘sabers blazing to lift as he brought them down against the woman’s own weapon, intercepting the death blow meant for Solo—for the father who’d abandoned a young Ben a long time ago.

The woman seemed shocked, but she recovered quickly and _laughed_.

“ _There you are_ ,” she whispered, but Kylo was forcing her back with brute strength before she could say anything else, focusing his rage to a point as he spun the yellow ‘saber in his hand, aiming for the woman’s neck, and with his actions the strange stasis spell keeping the battle contained seemed to burst. There was a renewed hail of blaster fire from the rubble where some smugglers still hid, and behind him he could hear Dameron rallying the others.

Immediately, he could tell that the skill of this woman far exceeded the one he’d encountered in Takodana’s forests. The Force was strong with her, and she blocked his strike with ease, twirling her ‘saber in her hand while she stepped back, as if goading him forward, only to use the Force to push him back when he advanced, until their blades were meeting in a series of complicated moves as each of them pitted two different lightsaber styles against each other, oblivious to the battle that raged on around them. The Force seemed to roar in Kylo’s ears as he parried another of the woman’s blows, urging and cautioning all at once, and if the other fight was instinct, this was pitting everything he had, everything he _was_ against an opponent who only seemed to match what he dished out at every turn, smart enough to use speed to compensate what she lacked in strength. She spun and struck, every attack an aim to kill, forcing Kylo onto the defensive as the stench of smoke and death threatened to choke them both.

 _Precise. Deadly. Left_ , Kylo snarled to himself, barely dodging when she lunged and hissing as her ‘saber tore through the material of his armour.

“Skywalker’s star pupil,” she snarled, twirling her ‘saber and executing a spin, which Kylo met with the strength of both his blades. “He had such high hopes for you. How does it feel, being the favourite of so many masters, and knowing you threw it all away to chase ghosts with the scum of the galaxy? Knowing you gave up all that potential, all that power?”

“I don’t know,” Kylo replied, forcing her off, their blades meeting in rapid succession as they fought, the sound of the clashing lightsabers echoing in his ears, “why don’t you ask your dead henchman? I’m sure they could tell you about how much I gave up.”

That seemed to spark the first bit of genuine anger in his opponent, her stance faltering just long enough for Kylo to strike, the yellow ‘saber cutting through the loose material of her robes like butter, but failing to connect with skin and earning Kylo a kick to the stomach for his efforts. Then she was on him again, her anger pressing on him within the Force, almost enough to make him forget how to breathe as she met him blow for blow, sparks flying with every parried strike, but as Kylo fought through it, as he pushed back and retaliated with every ounce of strength and concentration that he could muster, he couldn’t help but feel like something was off, like something was _wrong_.

Running for years, fleeing from ghosts and trying to stay under the radar of two shadowy and opposing facts, Kylo had learned the importance of instinct even beyond what he had been taught by his uncle, by his _father_ before the man had started having time for every child but his own. Instinct was what had told him to keep quiet when his mother was busy with saving a galaxy that didn’t want to stay saved after his tears had stopped having any sort of effect, instinct was what had driven him to tell his uncle about the voice that whispered and told him things in the dark, instinct had led him to that shady port in Nar Shaddaa, to his first crew, to his current crew. It had carried them through harrying situations, had guided his hand more than once.

Instinct had driven him to Hux, on that day all those years ago, when logic had whispered to leave him, to not get involved in disputes on the Smuggler’s Moon.

And instinct was screaming at him, now, that he was missing something, a crucial piece of the puzzle, even as the oppressive weight of the Force went dark around him, urging him to give into things he’d done his best to reject when he’d first heard the voice in his head so very long ago. That was why, when the woman brought down her ‘saber, Kylo only used one to block it, using the other to strike at the woman’s mask, sending her reeling back when Kylo’s blow connected.

She didn’t scream, but she did shout in anger when Kylo’s foot tangled with hers, sending her sprawling back against the ruins and the dirt even as Kylo’s other 'saber slashed across her chest, the acrid scent of burning flesh filling the air.  When Kylo advanced further, she lashed out with the Force, her lightsaber spinning towards him and catching him on the shoulder, and it was instinct that had Kylo drawing on the Force again to  _push_ , the strength of his connection sending the woman stumbling back again, tripping over the debris.

Then, while Kylo was stepping back, she seemed to pause, and, with a low laugh, dragged herself to her feet. Without the vocader to modulate her voice, Kylo could hear her ragged breathing, but instead of resuming the attack she almost seemed to deflate, her shoulders sagging as she reached up to tear the mask off her face, lifting her eyes to reveal—

“Rey?”

She was older than the last time he’d seen her, a woman where she’d been just a girl at the time of his leaving, but it was _her_ , her hazel eyes almost looking sad as they gazed at each other over the fallen statue that had once stood proud at the front of Maz’s castle, the hum of their lightsabers audible even over the sounds of the battle behind him. Distantly, he could hear the sounds of more ships approaching, and of a shouted _“it’s the Resistance!”_ but Kylo let those sounds fade away, lost in the apparition that stood before him.

"Ben," she said, voice deeper than Kylo remembered.  "It's been some time, hasn't it?  The Supreme Leader said you were alive.  He had me searching, you know. For you.” Her mouth quirked into a small smile, but there was something angry in the expression, _bitter_ as she reached up to tap her cheek, where Kylo’s lightsaber had grazed her skin through the split mask. “Won’t you remove yours as well?” A small pout, almost like the one she would have given him years ago. “It’s hardly fair that they know who I am but not who you are.”

He didn’t know why he obeyed, but he did, and when he’d discarded his own mask as well he didn’t miss the way her eyes seemed to flicker with sorrow and fury, nor did he miss the way she stepped forward, staff still humming at her side.

“The prodigal son returns,” she said, “but to whom?"

"To no one."

She tilted her head back and laughed, as if he'd said something genuinely funny. "Not true, Ben, or you wouldn't be here at all.  You would have left Solo to die, and you would have disappeared back into the shadows, as you do.  Do you even know what you threw away, Ben, when you left that first time? Do you _know?"_

He didn’t answer, eyes tracking her every movement, the oppressive fog of her Force-signature pressing in on all sides.

“Luke was devastated,” Rey continued softly. “Leia and Han looked everywhere for you. All I ever wanted was a family, Ben, and you—you threw yours away. You threw _me_ away. You were like a _brother_ , Ben, and you just _left_.”

“It was nothing more than what they did to me. I didn’t belong with them,” Kylo hissed back, and then, for the first time since she’d unmasked herself, the fury in Rey’s eyes overpowered the grief, twisting her face into something almost recognizable, into something that glowed and blazed so strongly that Kylo almost had to shield his eyes.

“You always were selfish, Ben," she hissed.  "Never seeing what was right in front of you.  I used to think it was us against the world, you know, but then you were gone, maybe dead, and I was _alone._ But my master was there.  He told me of all you’d given up, how you’d thrown his promises in his face, too, and I realized that that’s what you _do_ , Ben, you run away from your problems, and for awhile, we had to let you do that. Why not? Even the Supreme Leader couldn’t find you.” She shook her head, and this time, when she looked back at him, there was no trace of the girl who’d once ridden on Kylo’s shoulders and begged to hold Anakin's lightsaber. “Then the good General’s ship went down on this backwater planet, and you can imagine how surprised we were when he returned without the Knight I’d assigned to guard him, with word that the droid we’d been looking for was _here_ , of all places. And we knew.”

“Hux,” Kylo said before he could stop himself, feeling as though he’d been torn apart, flayed alive and hastily pieced back together. The sounds of combat suddenly drew nearer as the Resistance battled the remaining stormtroopers, and Rey’s face whipped to where Solo and the others were advancing towards them.

“The General is a slimy little sycophant of a man with the blood of billions on his hands,” she said, voice fierce with resentment, “but _oh_ , he did not wish to give you up. He wiped out an entire star system with just one order, but he could not give up _one smuggler_.” She tilted her head to the side. “But the Supreme Leader is wise, and he was much more willing to talk once he was informed of Kylo Ren’s _true_ identity.”

Kylo hadn’t thought he could experience more pain than he already had, but at Rey’s words, at the idea that Hux could have willingly given him up, willingly break their silent truce, he felt something inside him crumble, and with a loud shout he lunged at her, channelling his own fury into every action, fighting and fighting and _fighting_ until he had her scrambling back at his feet, her progress halted by the gangplank of her own shuttle.

 _Kill her_ _kill her_ kill her, the voices shouted, no longer whispering, an all-consuming force that Kylo nearly obeyed. Hux’s face flashed in front of his mind again, the hunger in his eyes, the way his hands had felt against Kylo’s skin, the weight of him not just between Kylo’s thighs but within his body, and he almost howled his rage to the sky.

 _We all have to choose a side eventually, Kylo_ , Hux’s voice whispered in his head, and Kylo shuddered.

Had he just been kidding himself this whole time, he wondered as Rey watched him with half-lidded and knowing eyes, thinking that he could remain neutral? That he could escape the legacy of his family, that he could pull himself out from under their shadow, exist independently of them?

_“That’s what you do, Ben. You run away from your problems.”_

He snarled, lifting his lightsaber and holding the tip of it against Rey’s vulnerable throat. Around him, the fighting was dying down, and he could see Solo out of the corners of his eyes, watching with so much pain in his expression, so much—

 _No_ , he thought desperately, _no, he can’t, not when he—when he—_

He flew back suddenly, body landing rough against the jagged ground, and by the time he’d stood Rey was already scrambling up the gangplank with a few remaining ‘troopers, Kylo too numb to do anything but stare, too numb to do anything but push himself up off the ground and deactivate his ‘sabers as the shuttle took off, avoiding the shots of the x-wings and vanishing into the atmosphere alongside the remaining TIEs.

Gone.   _Gone_.  

“Ben?” he heard, the name spoken so tentatively that for a moment he thought it couldn’t have come from Han Solo, who had never sounded truly tentative about anything ever in his life, but when Kylo looked up and saw Ben’s father— _his father—_ approaching he realized it had been him, and, still reeling, he could only stand still as Han lifted not-quite-shaking hands to his face, as if trying to memorize him by touch.

“You—“ Solo said, swallowing thickly, “you look good, kid,” and Kylo doubted he was at all prepared for the way his son suddenly sagged against him, more bodily contact than he’d likely been expecting. Still, he didn’t stagger, not even once, and when he felt Chewbacca envelop him in a warm embrace he didn’t fight it, too stunned to be able to do more than breathe.

“Boss!” someone shouted, and when Kylo broke free of the embrace it was to see Bia scrambling over the debris, the relief on her face so palpable that it started a relieved laugh out of Kylo, who stumbled when she launched herself at him. Up close she smelled of singed skin and smoke, and when he looked down at her he could see scorch marks marring her tattooed lekku. Behind her, slower, trailed Madana, whose face was cracked and lined with pain but who smiled upon seeing him anyway.

“We saw you fight her,” he said when he was close enough, grief making his voice uneven. “Gods, Kylo, I thought I’d never see you alive again.”

Behind them, Solo cleared his throat, and when Kylo looked over Dameron, the rotund droid, and the man from earlier were there, watching them expressions that ranged from shock to confusion. Too tired to make proper introductions, he shook his head, and Madana, looking more a mess than Kylo had ever seen him, was quick to reach out, introducing himself and gathering names from the men. The stranger was named Finn, Kylo learned, a defector from the First Order, and even the mention was enough to make his lungs seize, the sharp, telltale prick of tears in his eyes something he fought against as everything slowly began to overwhelm him.

He’d spent years running from his father, from his _family_ , from the burdens he hadn’t wanted, from the wars he hadn’t believed in, and yet here he was anyway, surrounded by the wreckage of a battle he had helped fight, the echoes of the Hosnian System warring with the memory of Hux’s touch in the dark depths of his beloved ship. _There are no coincidences_.

There was also no running. Solo knew, now. He knew who his son had become, _what_ he had become, and with Rey out there, trained and dangerous and _aware_ , Kylo could not simply hope to to vanish into obscurity again. She would hunt him down, she and the being she called master, and Kylo—

 _I can’t let them die for me,_ he thought, eyes trailing towards Bia and Madana. The twi’lek girl had her arms wrapped around Finn’s shoulders, a massive smile on her face as she thanked him for _bashing that buckethead’s head in with that wicked baton_ , and Madana was standing nearby conversing lowly with Dameron, shooting a glance over at Kylo every few moments while Solo merely watched him, eyes sad, as if he was already resigning himself to Kylo taking his crew and leaving.

In his chest, Ben cried and struggled, and for the first time in years Kylo closed his eyes and let the boy he had once been free, suffusing him throughout his mind and body even as he drew the Force around himself like a cloak, trying to centre himself in the midst of all the chaos, to find a moment of clarity in the mess his life had rapidly become once more. That was how he first caught it, the rapid approach of a familiar, once-beloved presence, and when he opened his eyes to see a large transport fly overhead and land nearby he didn’t have to wonder who was inside, he _knew_.

And by the look on Solo’s face, like a man who had just spotted an oasis in the middle of a desert, he knew it, too. Quietly, Kylo watched his father as he approached the shuttle, standing still amongst the Resistance agents that spilled out until the last person stepped out.

 _“You know, Ben, that I’ll always love you,_ ” Leia Organa said in his memory, her voice a beacon of light in the darkness. _“A mother’s love is eternal.”_

But he couldn’t face her, not yet, so he turned his ruined face to the side, only watching out of the corner of his eye as his mother and father approached each other for the first time in years, their affection for one another softening the air around them.

“You changed your hair.”

“Same jacket.”

“No! New jacket.” And the way Solo said it made the last remnants of Kylo’s resistance fade away, so soft and filled with so much love that it almost hurt to watch as Chewie walked up to his mother and embraced her, the way he’d embraced Kylo himself only moments before, like all the years, all the hurt, was—not _forgiven_ , but acknowledged, something that could, perhaps, be mended with time and care.

“Leia,” Solo said then, and the tone of his voice seemed to catch her attention, for she looked at him, and then beyond him to where Kylo was standing, and the quiet hope and heartbreak in her eyes— _his eyes, you have your mother’s eyes, kid_ —was what prompted Kylo to take the first steps forward until he was standing next to his father, taller than them both, _what a strange boy you have, Leia, really, I don’t see much of you in him at all_. But those were old hurts, old wounds, and so when his mother made the last few steps forward and reached out he allowed himself to reach back in return, her hand so small in his when she took it, belying the strength that Kylo knew lay within her.

 _You abandoned me_ , he wanted to scream at her. _If it weren’t for this war, would you have found me at all? Would you have even looked?_

“I’m so sorry,” Leia whispered then, as if she’d heard, but no, she couldn’t have, so she must have known, had to have carried with her the weight of her own mistakes, and Kylo, who had wanted to hear those words for so long, could only fall to his knees in front of her, letting her hand stroke his hair like she had when he was but a boy.

“Ben,” she said, “we need you, Ben, there’s—there’s so much we need to talk about. Luke is waiting for us back a D’Qar. Will you come with us?”

The question was one he’d expected, but he flinched back hearing it all the same, only stopped by the way Leia’s hand cupped his face, by the wavering presence of Solo at his back. _Would he go with them?_ he thought. _Would he?_

_Can I?_

If he went with them, that would be the end of any neutrality, of the life he had spent years building with his crew. He would be committing himself to this war, to a conflict he could not believe in, to restore something he did not wish to see in power ever again, but the memory of the screams of those billions of people suddenly echoed in his mind again, and he had to chose his eyes to it, to the knowledge that Hux had _ordered_ it, if Rey’s words were to be believed.

 _Rey_.

Kylo shuddered. “I saw her. Rey. She was with the First Order, she—she was here.”

The little girl from the desert planet, trained in the sands like the rest of them, brought up to survive and to thrive wherever possible. Kylo hardly knew her now, but he also couldn’t help but wonder if that could have been him in another life, swathed in black and cloaked with hate.

Leia’s eyes were sad when she stroked her thumbs over his cheek, and Kylo knew that she knew, but with the sadness was the hope from before, the fierce determination he’d always associated with the figure of Leia Organa, mother and war hero both. He could leave, he thought. He could refuse her, do his best to blend in with the shadows and try to forget about all that had happened here, keep running until the ends of the galaxy, but eventually there would be nowhere left to go.

He remembered when he’d first heard the news that Vader was his grandfather, the final schism between Kylo and the family who had kept the secret from him for so long. At the time he’d been angry, the deception cutting deep, but now, as he looked at his mother, at his own eyes mirrored in another’s face, he wondered if Leia had tried to run from that legacy too. If perhaps that was why she hadn’t told him, why she’d sworn her brother never to reveal who Vader was to them.

But it had caught her, it always did, and in the end, it had destroyed some of the things most important to her.

 _I don’t forgive you, not yet_ , he thought, hands lifting to cover hers as he rose to his feet, keeping them in place, and he could tell from her expression that she understood, the sadness in her eyes deepening as she prepared to withdraw her hands. She would let him go, he realized, if that was what he truly wanted. If he chose to leave, she would not stop him, and so, instead of letting her lower her hands, he clutched them tighter before relaxing his grip.

There was no question of what Madana and Bia would do. He knew his crew would follow him to the ends of the galaxy and beyond if he asked them, so when he drew in a breath, when he stepped back from his mother, he knew what his answer would be.

“Yes.”

Perhaps one day he would regret this decision. But he was done running, and if he could not escape his legacy, then he would damn well wrangle it and make it his own. The lines had been drawn in this new war, born from the blood of the Skywalker family and decades of resentment against a broken system, and so Kylo would fight to make a better world, a better legacy, one that did not weigh so heavily or carry with it so many crippling scars.

 _We all have to choose a side eventually, Kylo_.

Well then, he thought to Hux’s memory as he boarded the transport, eyes cast out over the horizon, _I’ve chosen._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it. My first ever completed kylux fic. There are, because I'm me, little KOTOR references hidden throughout (the obvious one being Luke's spiel about love, which was lifted from Jolee Bindo), and I really, really hope you guys enjoyed it. I tried to tie everything back in, but I'm honestly not sure how well that worked out, or if I, in the end, even did this prompt or the smuggler!Kylo trope much justice. If you can, _please_ let me know what you think. As this is my first ever complete fic for this fandom, I am really starved for encouragement right now.
> 
> A massive thank you to everyone who stuck by this fic and as always, I can be found on my [tumblr](http://tarisians.tumblr.com/) <3


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